


[vore] Spicy Cinnabun

by wolfbunny



Series: Mishmash Kemonomimi AU series [21]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Digestion, Fatal Vore, Hard vore, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Non-fatal vore, Torture, Vore, graphic digestion, kemonomimi skeletons, mild cooking, safe vore, some tags may be retconned, unwilling prey, willing prey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-24 22:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16649144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfbunny/pseuds/wolfbunny
Summary: Wolf!Edge's brother has caught some bunnies!





	1. Red is a Mean Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DandelionSea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DandelionSea/gifts).



> At last I can post (the first part of) this fic I've been working on for over a month. 
> 
> The first part is where the bad stuff happens :3

“What are you doing to that bunny?”  
  
“Just in time, Boss. Here, hold this.” Red tossed him the bunny, and Edge caught it rather than let it drop to the floor. Its limbs, skull, and orange-tinted ears dangled limply over the sides of his hand. It seemed to be unconscious, and unclothed.  
  
Edge didn’t have too much time to examine it, because Red lifted a second bunny to his mouth. This one had blue fur and, although it was bound at the wrists and ankles, also seemed to be asleep or knocked out, and that was all that Edge noticed about it before he was too distracted by what Red was doing to it. He picked up its little hands with surprising delicacy, placed the tips of its fingers between his teeth, and bit down. The rabbit yelped, unable to sleep through that. Red lifted it by its arms and guided its feet into his mouth with his tongue. The bunny kicked, but that only pushed its feet deeper in. Red bit down, just hard enough to hold it in place, and let it try to yank loose, then harder, evoking another cry. “Think I got a couple metatarsals,” he mumbled. “That’s what you get for squirming.”  
  
“Red!” Edge reminded him that he’d asked a question.  
  
“What? I don’t want ‘em to scratch me up.”  
  
That was an explanation—sort of. Edge folded his ears back. “I see. Self-defense.”  
  
“Come on, Boss, you’re always telling me to eat healthier. What’s a more natural diet for a wolf than live rabbits?”  
  
The blue rabbit curled in on itself as best it could while hanging by its arms. Tiny droplets of marrow dripped from its toes, shaken loose by its trembling.  
  
“I meant leafy green vegetables.”  
  
“Got ya covered.” Red turned to the table. Edge flicked an ear in annoyance that he had been so hyperfocused on the rabbits he hadn’t noticed half the contents of the refrigerator spread across the kitchen table. Red selected a leaf of spinach and held it close to the bunny’s teeth. “Want some?”  
  
The bunny seemed to have run out of stamina, hanging limply, sweat beading on its skull to join its cyan magic in occasionally dripping toward the floor. But it found the energy to turn its face away from the offering. Red shrugged and set it on an empty plate, and shoved the leaf of spinach up the bottom of its rib cage. “That’s no good, it’s just gonna fall out,” he muttered to himself, then added a few more, then took them back out. Edge would have been surprised if he stuffed the entire cavity with spinach; that was a lot of greenery for him. But apparently he had another idea. Absorbed in his work, Red turned his back on Edge and blocked his view.  
  
Edge wasn’t willing to hover over his brother’s shoulders, so he took the opportunity to look closer at the rabbit he was holding. It was bigger—or at least taller—than the other bunny. He pushed gently on its skull with his thumb, but it was out cold. It was dripping orange marrow from the tips of its fingers; Red must have given it the same treatment. Edge was no stranger to blood on his clothes but it was still irritating. The bunny couldn’t help it, of course. He held it closer, trying to contain the dripping. It was just as well it wouldn’t see what Red was doing to its friend.  
  
“Stop squirming—don’t pull on that, you had your chance—” Eventually Red was done and stepped back to admire his work. Edge was impressed in spite of himself. Red had weaved some small leaves of spinach through the bunny’s ribs.  
  
Red must have seen it in the tilt of his ears. Sometimes it was hard being a wolf. “Impressed with my artistry, Boss? I can cook pretty good when I want to.”  
  
“That’s not cooking. He’s completely raw.”  
  
Unfazed, Red shrugged. “I can soften them up a bit, not too much or they’ll dust, y’know.” He made as if to set a pan on the stove.  
  
“No, no, get on with it. There’s no need to torture your prey like this in the first place.” It wasn’t that Edge objected to his brother eating rabbits; he was a wolf, after all. But there was no reason he had to stand here and watch the bunnies suffer. Red already knew him; he didn’t really need to feign invulnerability around his brother.  
  
“What, is it making you uncomfortable?”  
  
Scratch that. Red was an asshole. Edge tried to glare him down, but he was immune.  
  
“They taste better when they’re afraid,” was Red’s excuse. At least he had the decency to look away.  
  
The orange bunny squirmed in Edge’s grasp, and he realized he’d been squeezing it. Curses. Now it was awake for this. He did his best to envelop it in his gloves and block its view. Maybe it wouldn’t be lucid, after whatever Red had done to subdue it, and the magic loss from its fingers and toes; maybe it would go back to sleep until this was over.  
  
Red was holding the blue bunny down so it didn’t undo all his work. “What do I gotta do to get you to stop squirming?” he asked, pressing its ribs against the plate until they gave a tiny crack, just loud enough for Edge’s wolf ears to pick up.  
  
“Untie me,” the bunny suggested defiantly. It seemed to be always grinning, just the way its skull was formed, but the grin was strained.  
  
“All right,” Red agreed, and pulled one of its humeri out of its socket.  
  
The blue bunny gasped, loud and anguished. The orange bunny stirred in Edge’s grasp.  
  
“What? Now you can move the other one, right? I’m not gonna undo that fiddly little knot.”  
  
The bunny didn’t take advantage of this alleged freedom, instead holding its loose arm close to its ribs with the attached one. Its breath was ragged.  
  
“Ready to do your legs?” Red asked.  
  
“No … no,” the bunny answered, barely a whisper, shaking its skull for good measure.  
  
“Sans?” said the orange bunny, its voice surprisingly loud for its diminutive size. It was trying to peer around Edge’s fingers. Edge moved to shield it with his hand, but it determinedly pulled itself up and looked out into the room. It caught sight of the blue bunny. “Sans!”  
  
The blue bunny—Sans—flinched, as if being seen like this by the other bunny were just as painful as everything else that had happened to him.  
  
“Sans! Are you—” The orange bunny demanded a response, but couldn’t ask if Sans was ‘okay’ when he clearly wasn’t. Edge covered the bunny’s eyes again, hoping it hadn’t seen the extent of the damage, but it clambered over his hands, leaving spots of orange magic.  
  
Sans’s gaze was fixed on the other bunny, and Edge fancied he looked a little bit grateful when Edge blocked the orange bunny’s view. But when the orange bunny failed to be deterred, Sans let his skull drop back onto the plate. “Papyrus … don’t watch.” There was no need to raise his voice. The orange bunny—Papyrus—could hear him clearly across the room.  
  
Papyrus choked on a sob, ears flat down his back in misery. “Brother? What happened?”  
  
Sans didn’t answer. Something glistened in his eye socket. Edge felt a twinge of some emotion. The rabbits were not just friends but brothers.  
  
“Sit tight, bunny, you’ll get your turn.” Red leered at Papyrus.  
  
Papyrus violently froze, and Edge resisted the urge to pet him soothingly. “Get on with it, Red.”  
  
“You’re the boss, Boss.” Red shrugged again, and picked Sans up from the plate. The bunny breathed hard, trying not to let his unattached arm flop around. Was it taking all his concentration, or was he just distracting himself from his situation? Red cupped him in his hands, pleased with what he’d done, and gave the bunny an exploratory lick from his pelvis to the top of his skull. “Pretty good, although you’d probably be better with mustard.”  
  
Red reached for the condiment, but Edge snorted, stopping him in his tracks. “I thought you were eating healthy today.”  
  
“What’s wrong with mustard?” Red snatched up the bottle and squeezed a defiant glob onto the bunny’s skull. Sans shivered as it oozed down onto his ribs and Red’s phalanges.  
  
Edge hmphed. “At least it’s not k—”  
  
Red reached for the ketchup and added a good dollop of that too.  
  
“But you don’t even like—ugh!” Edge had half a mind to stomp out of the kitchen, but he felt obliged to bear witness to Sans’s fate. Perhaps it would have been merciful to remove Papyrus from the room, but he couldn’t deny that in the bunny’s place he would have wanted to know what happened to his brother.  
  
Sans squeezed his eye sockets shut as the condiments mingled and ran down into them. Better that he focus on that than on worrying about Papyrus.  
  
Red licked him again. “Exquisite,” he declared.  
  
He started to close his jaws around the bunny’s head and shoulders. The bunny must have felt them closing in, because his eyes snapped open in spite of the mustard, too late to do anything more than dart a horrified glance toward Edge and Papyrus.  
  
Edge steeled himself so as not to wince in sympathy with the bunny when Red swallowed him. Really, it was good that he was getting it over with. But Red didn’t swallow; he had started to push the bunny the rest of the way into his mouth when his eye sockets suddenly went wide. A moment later, he tried to spit the bunny back into his hands, but Sans was stuck to the wolf’s tongue. Edge realized he had bitten Red’s tongue and was holding on for dear life. It was fortunate Edge had steeled himself so as not to laugh, although his tail may have wagged a little.  
  
Red pulled on the bunny until he lost his grip with a sob, and Edge’s amusement evaporated.  
  
“Why you little—You’re a feisty one, huh?” Red got over his annoyance quickly, which may just have hurt the bunny more. “You need something to keep you occupied, huh? How ‘bout I remove a couple more bones from their sockets?”  
  
Sans curled up, subdued, clutching his loose arm as best he could. It was awkward when it was still tied to the other arm at the wrist.  
  
“So you like biting things, do ya?” Red ran his tongue over his jaw, apparently suffering no ill effects from the rabbit’s desperate attack. “Let’s see if there’s something better for you to bite on.”  
  
Edge lost sight of the bunny for a moment as Red turned to select something from the table. It was a baby carrot.  
  
“Bunnies like carrots, right?” He pressed the vegetable against the bunny’s teeth, but Sans only whimpered and turned away.  
  
“C’mon, open up or else,” Red threatened casually.  
  
Sans quivered, meeting the wolf’s eyes, and slowly parted his teeth. He didn’t glance over at Papyrus. Edge wondered if he would have fought back more if he’d been alone.  
  
Red pushed the carrot in between the bunny’s little jaws, but it was half as wide as his skull and wouldn’t fit. “Wider,” Red instructed, but Sans was doing the best he could already, tears leaking from his sockets as Red pushed his jawbone to its limits.  
  
“I said wider.” Red shoved the carrot hard enough to make Sans yelp. “You know what happens to bunnies that don’t listen?”  
  
Probably about the same thing that happened to bunnies that did listen, Edge thought. Personally, he would have fought to the end no matter who was watching, but he couldn’t really fault Sans for submitting in order to make less of a spectacle. His brother would be scarred badly enough as it was. Not that Red was likely to let the second bunny live.  
  
Red’s expression softened. “Aw, it’s okay, bunny. I understand. It’s too big for you.” He set the carrot on the plate, then ran a claw over the lower edge of Sans’s jawbone, to the corner, where he deftly pulled the hinge apart. The bunny’s sobs were muffled a moment later as he reinserted the carrot, wedging it in tight.  
  
“There you go. That’s a good bunny.”  
  
“Nnnhh—!” Sans protested as the wolf leaned his skull back and dropped him in between his jaws, all at once. But he still didn’t swallow. Edge hated to imagine what might be happening to the bunny behind those teeth as Red looked pointedly over at him. He turned Papyrus over in his hands, encouraging him not to watch, and this time the orange bunny just looked up at him, tears in his sockets.  
  
Red waited impatiently for a moment, then finally swallowed. “Come on, Boss, I want the other bunny to see. Give ‘im here.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
“’Cause despair tastes even better than fear.” Red grinned unpleasantly and snatched Papyrus out of Edge’s hands. Edge was loath to grab him back, thus admitting that he’d let Red catch him off-guard in order to take him in the first place.  
  
So he just watched as Red held the bunny up to his face, mocking him with cooing tones. “Poor bunny, you want a turn too, right? You wanna be with your friend?”  
  
“They’re brothers,” Edge growled. Red ignored him.  
  
“Come on, let’s see how he’s doing in there,” he said, as if he were doing the bunny a special favor, and pulled up his shirt to reveal his ectobelly. Sans was still being squeezed down his esophagus; from the outside they could see the bunny stretched out and yet squeezed tight, though the mechanism acting on him was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the ectoflesh.  
  
“Sans!!” Papyrus leaped out of Red’s grasp and clung to his stomach, staring into the red depths, as if he’d forgotten about the wolves entirely, not to mention his own injuries.  
  
After a moment, Sans started to decompress, forced down into Red’s stomach chamber. At last he lay unmoving in the middle of the fleshy globe.  
  
“Sans! I’ll—I have to—” Papyrus started clawing at the translucent flesh in front of him, and lost his grip on it. Red, in a mockery of consideration, caught him and made a platform out of his hands for the bunny to stand on as he clawed at Red’s stomach, smearing it with orange marrow from his missing phalanges.  
  
At first, Sans stayed where he was, and Edge hoped he had lost consciousness. He’d seen Red eat a bunny before, and if Sans could be spared awareness during what was going to happen, it would be a mercy for both him and Papyrus.  
  
Papyrus kept at it, calling his brother’s name over and over. Edge was impressed the blood loss didn’t seem to be weakening him.  
  
Edge frowned as Sans stirred, his skull turning enough that he caught a glimpse of his brother.  Papyrus froze. Sans extinguished his eye lights and pretended he was still unconscious. But it didn’t fool the other bunny, and he redoubled his efforts. “Brother! Hang on! I’m going to get you out of there!”  
  
“No you’re not,” Red said, with a chuckle that shook his stomach enough to knock Papyrus over. The bunny got to his knees, sparing his injured feet, and kept trying to dig through the translucent red flesh.  
  
“You wanna go in there and shake him awake?” Red offered.  
  
Papyrus looked up at him for a moment as if he didn’t understand the question, then ignored him and started trying to bite his way through instead.  
  
“Hey, none of that now. You want a carrot too?”  
  
Papyrus didn’t even look up, because Sans was moving again, righting himself. He couldn’t really stand without a firm surface, but he could at least sit in a mostly vertical way. He had gotten the carrot out of his jaws, and Edge realized it was only because the fluids surrounding him in there had eaten away at it, softening it until it wasn’t wedged in so tightly. Sans took a moment to push his jawbone back into place, so he could attempt a reassuring smile for Papyrus. His arm wasn’t so important—unwieldy to reattach, and perhaps hopeless considering the little trails of dust that were floating away from the broken joint.  
  
“Sans!” Papyrus leaned against the barrier between them, ears erect. Sans reached forward with his usable hand, pressing it against Papyrus’s through the wall. He shook his head. His smile had been strained, but now it seemed genuine and soft.  
  
“Sans, no! I can’t—I can’t leave you there!” Papyrus was facing away from Edge but it sounded as if he was crying.  
  
Sans just shook his head again and glanced toward Edge. Was he entrusting him with Papyrus? Did he expect some kind of mercy? Or was he really just indicating the door, telling Papyrus to run? That’s what Edge would have done, futile as it was.  
  
Papyrus shook his head in response, his fingers sliding down the surface of Red’s stomach, making lines in the marrow that already stained it.  
  
Edge took a step forward to reclaim Papyrus, but stopped when he saw Sans flinch. His smile had become more of a grimace. His ears were starting to look ragged, flecks of blue magic drifting away and quickly dissolving, similar to the carrot, and, Edge noticed, the spinach. He was saying something, increasingly frantic, but Edge couldn’t hear a word. He clutched at the ectoflesh separating him from his brother, let go briefly to point toward Edge, tried to dig through to reach Papyrus in spite of the flare of purple as his marrow mixed with Red’s juices. At least they also ate through the string tying the bunny’s wrists together, releasing his good arm from the detached one, which slipped away and settled in the stomach at his side. So far, the bones that had been whole when he was swallowed weren’t visibly shedding dust or marrow, but the severed arm seemed to be going quicker.  
  
Papyrus didn’t even look at Edge, staying laser-focused on his brother. Things only got worse for Sans, his features twisting in agony, increasingly tattered ears pressed back, but he still managed in between throes to plead with his eyes for Papyrus to stop watching.  
  
“No, no, no! Sans! You’re going to be okay—you have to—” Papyrus did close his eyes for a moment, leaning his forehead against Red’s stomach. Edge was tempted to reach out and grab him, but then his skull snapped up, and he addressed Red. “Mr. Wolf, please! Don’t do this to my brother!”  
  
“Relax, bunny, it’ll be your turn soon.” Red grinned down at him.  
  
“Red,” Edge said, his voice softer than he’d intended.  
  
“What, Boss, did you want one? I guess that’s fair, since there are two.”  
  
“That’s not what—”  
  
“Let no one say I wouldn’t catch a rabbit for my little brother.”   
  
Red was baiting him now. He closed his jaws, refusing to rise to the provocation.  
  
Meanwhile Sans was deteriorating. Even from this distance Edge could make out some places where his bones were starting to crack or flake away. He alternately curled up and lashed out, disturbing the carrot and revealing it was nothing but mush now; it was mostly gone in seconds once it lost its shape.  
  
“Sans? Sans!” Papyrus called, but Sans only rarely found the wherewithal to look out at him for a moment.  
  
“Looks painful, huh?” said Red.  
  
Papyrus glared up at him, tears flowing steadily. “How could you? Why would—Sans! No!” Papyrus could only spare him a moment of fury before returning his focus to Sans.  
  
Sans’s eyelights had gone out, spine arched, mouth open in a silent scream. Edge doubted he was even aware of Papyrus anymore. Papyrus kept up his chant of “Sans, no!” and “Brother! Please!” but his efforts to rip through the ectoflesh grew more and more perfunctory, his radii and ulnae dripping with his own marrow, whether from the continued bleeding of his distal phalanges or what he’d already smeared on Red’s belly and was now scraping off. It was also all over Red’s phalanges and metatarsals, and consequently Papyrus’s knees and tibiae. Although some of that might have been tears; they were also orange.  
  
Papyrus’s words gave way to sobs as Sans stopped struggling. Edge hoped for Papyrus’s sake that the doomed bunny had lost the ability to feel what was happening to him along with the ability to move. The detached arm was long gone, and his extremities and narrower bones were joining it, dissolving into dust which was quickly absorbed by Red’s magic.  
  
There was surely no benefit to Papyrus seeing any more than this. Edge reached for him.  
  
“No!” Papyrus snapped, shoving his fingers away and leaning his skull and chest against Red’s stomach.  
  
“I think he’s about ready,” said Red. Until now he’d very obligingly kept his hands a steady platform for Papyrus to stand or kneel on, but now he grabbed the bunny and pressed him against his stomach. “Get a good last look, yeah?”  
  
“Red, you’re getting blood everywhere,” Edge complained as the motion shook orange droplets onto the floor, the table, the chair.  
  
Red grinned at him. “Sure that’s your problem? Not going soft on the bunnies?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you eat a bunny.”  
  
“So what?” Edge growled. “I don’t have your taste for theatrics.”  
  
“Come on, Boss. You love theatrics.”  
  
Edge bristled, growling low and continuous.  
  
Red lifted Papyrus to his skull, ignoring the bunny’s efforts to grab onto his stomach or shirt, and sniffed him. “That’s some good despair. Go on, Boss, show us you’re a real wolf.”   
  
He held the bunny out toward Edge, but Edge made no move to accept. He wasn’t going to let Red bully him into eating a bunny.  
  
“All right, suit yourself. More for me.” Red licked the bunny appreciatively. Papyrus only whimpered. Red opened his jaws wide, angled the bunny to go in head-first. Papyrus squeezed his eye sockets shut.  
  
Without thinking, Edge knocked Red away. It was a second later that he realized he’d done it with a bone attack.  
  
“Jeez, Boss. You coulda just said.” The force of the blow had turned Red’s skull away toward the table, and he didn’t look back as he held the bunny out again. Edge reached for him, and it was a good thing, because Red let go and dropped him without even looking to see if Edge was ready to catch him.  
  
“Red—I—” Edge couldn’t stop his tail curling between his legs.  
  
“Just eat ‘im if you want ‘im so much!” Red turned the rest of his body to align with his skull, smoothing out his shirt over his belly with uncharacteristic neatness. He wasn’t even going to watch?  
  
But Red wasn’t his only concern right now. Edge looked down at the bunny, sprawled in his hands much as he had been before he’d woken up, only now he kept his gaze turned toward Red—toward Sans. The merciful thing to do would be to just dust him now; Edge wouldn’t be as deliberately cruel as Red, but he didn’t think his digestion would work any faster. But if he did that, Red would never let him live it down. He could expect to be hounded about rabbits until he ate one where Red could see.  
  
He thought about pretending to eat the bunny and just chewing him to dust to end his suffering faster. But with his habitually bare midriff, it would be obvious to Red if he didn’t summon a stomach, or if he did but it stayed empty. Fine. If that was what Red wanted, he’d eat the bunny. He couldn’t put it through anything worse than it had already suffered. It was a good opportunity to show Red he wasn’t soft, without harming a bunny that still had a chance at a good life. It was definitely not him being obedient because he felt bad about throwing a bone at his more fragile brother.  
  
He couldn’t apologize to the bunny, but it wasn’t as if Papyrus was even paying attention to him. He did flinch when Edge pushed his skull and shoulders in between his jaws, sliding along his slick tongue, but otherwise didn’t react even when Edge swallowed as the bunny’s skull entered his throat. It took a few gulps to down the taller bunny, and Edge could still taste his marrow as he slid down toward the wolf’s stomach. The worst part was that Red was right; tears of bunny desperation were quite flavorful.  
  
“Ya actually did it,” said Red, drawing Edge’s attention away from the bunny inside him.  
  
“Red, your eye!” When Edge looked up from his own stomach, he saw the crack spiderwebbing up from his brother’s eye socket.   
  
“Those bones pack a punch.” Red touched a hand to his skull and examined the crimson marrow that came away on his phalanges.  
  
“I—am sorry, Red. I didn’t—”  
  
“Didn’t mean to risk dusting your brother over your new rabbit best friend, who you then ate? Give me a break, Boss. You don’t lose control like that.”  
  
“Now you’re upset that I ate him?” Edge bristled, but his tail stayed where it was. Red was right again. It wasn’t like him to lose control, and in the grand scheme of things, what did a couple of rabbits matter? Sans had suffered, but it was over now, and soon it would be over for Papyrus too. “You practically dared me to do it!”  
  
“I didn’t dare you to do this!” Red pointed at the crack in his skull.  
  
“You’re—You—” Edge backed away. What could he say? It had been his fault. He’d lost control. And for nothing, because the bunny was dying anyway. He felt it, a heavy lump in his stomach, matching the one he felt in his soul when he saw the damage to his brother’s skull. Red had almost died when his tooth had been knocked out. How could Edge have done this to him over a rabbit? “Red, let me heal that.”  
  
“Stay away from me,” Red snarled. “You got a lot of nerve, when you’re the one who did it in the first place. How bad is it?” He felt along the crack and winced.  
  
“It’s bad,” Edge admitted. “Please let me heal it.”  
  
“Relax, I’m not gonna dust. I just ate a whole rabbit, remember?”  
  
Edge, usually tall and proud, cowered. If there was any wolf justified in eating rabbits, it was Red. Why had he held it against him? And if he was meaner about it than he needed to be, so what? He couldn’t sympathize with the bunnies and still eat them, so he had no reason to be nice to them.  
  
“Red …”  
  
“Stars, it still hurts.” Red found a kitchen towel and held it against the wound to staunch the bleeding. Edge took advantage of the moment his back was turned to dart out of the room.  
  
He ran outside, not wanting to stay in the house with Red. But he didn’t want to risk meeting anyone else either, especially not with the rabbit visibly floating in his stomach. He turned and stalked around the house to the basement lab and let himself in.  
  
They’d visited a few other worlds using the machine, but it wasn’t without risk. Some of the universes were dangerous even by wolves’ standards. Others were friendlier, but there was no way to predict what they would find. And they were busy with their own lives—or Edge was busy and Red was just lazy.  
  
Anywhere was better than here, Edge thought. Where he couldn’t even save a single bunny, where he was a threat to his own brother. Red was better off without him.  
  
The last universe they’d visited had been pretty soft. Red had been disgusted with it, really. He would never suspect Edge would go to such a place. He selected the previous destination and activated the machine.


	2. Fluff and Misunderstandings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take the bunny and run!

The first thing he saw in the other universe was a fox. His mind, trained for battle, took in his surroundings at the same time—a near duplicate of the lab he’d just left, perhaps a bit smaller—but his conscious focus was all on the fox. A skeleton monster like himself, it was clearly startled to see him, fur standing up in surprise as it poised to run. It was dressed in an orange hoodie.  
  
Edge wasn’t here to start a fight, although the thought crossed his mind that if he cared about rabbits so much now, the ones here might be glad to be rid of a fox. But he wasn’t on a mission to exterminate all predators—he frowned, wondering if Red would recover from that skull wound without his attentions.  
  
The fox relaxed a bit as seconds passed and it wasn’t attacked. “A wolf, huh? I guess you could say today is just _packed_ with surprises.”  
  
Edge frowned deeper at the somewhat awkward pun.  
  
“You can call me Stretch. Nice to meet you—” It glanced down. “And your bunny friend.”  
  
Edge had almost forgotten about Papyrus. He leaned over to check on him. The fox was no threat.  
  
“Is he doing okay?” Stretch asked. The bunny was lying still, not writhing in pain at least but perhaps unconscious. His ears were intact which meant there had probably been no additional damage beyond his fingers.  
  
“I’ve got to get him out of there,” said Edge, to himself. He summoned a jagged bone construct, gripped it with the sharp end pointing toward his stomach.  
  
But what if this killed him? Papyrus might not survive without help, especially with the fox there. He’d just have to not die.  
  
“Stay back. I won’t let you have him,” he growled.  
  
“What are you talking about? I’m not gonna take your bunny.” The fox backed away a step, hands raised non-threateningly.  
  
Edge growled at it once more for good measure, satisfied with the way it made him jump a little, and braced himself to cut the rabbit loose. He’d have to be very careful not to stab Papyrus by accident.  
  
“Excuse me, wolf, but what are you doing?” The fox spoke up, breaking his concentration. Maybe he should drive him away entirely. “Don’t you know how to let a rabbit out? If you’re having some kinda problem with your magic—”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Edge snarled impatiently. Who’d ever heard of letting a rabbit out?  
  
“I mean normally—I have some experience in this—but why don’t you just dispel your magic instead of cutting into it? Seems pretty dangerous. And painful.”  
  
Edge froze, staring at the fox. “You can do that?”  
  
Stretch was incredulous, then suspicious, as if he didn’t believe the wolf could be so ignorant. “Uh, yeah? You’d better try it before you go slicing yourself open.”  
  
“Okay, shut up and let me focus.”  
  
It had never occurred to him to dispel his stomach while something was in it. There was a little resistance and for a moment he thought it would prove impossible after all. But then in a moment it was gone.  
  
The fox reached out and caught Papyrus before he hit the floor. Edge bristled, but Stretch’s intentions were good. He examined the bunny with concern. “What did you do to the little guy? He’s hurt.”  
  
“It wasn’t me,” Edge muttered darkly.  
  
“Wake up, bunny,” Stretch urged, massaging the tiny monster’s scapulae, then ears. Papyrus stirred, looked around long enough to register both predators, then curled into a ball in Stretch’s hands.  
  
“It’s okay, bunny, you’re safe.” Stretch spoke to him in a low, soothing voice, but it only made Papyrus shiver.  
  
“Here, hold him.” Stretch held out the bunny and Edge was horribly reminded of Red doing the same thing.  
  
 “Don’t you know how to do aftercare for a bunny?” Stretch sounded a bit disgusted. “Fine, I’ll show you.” He picked up a reasonably clean rag and swaddled Papyrus in it like a monster with experience swaddling bunnies. “Now just hold him and pet him and talk to him. Nice things, like he’s safe and a good bunny.”  
  
Edge accepted the bundle and started stroking the bunny’s ears. He wasn’t shivering now and his eyes were closed, relaxed. Maybe it was working.  
  
“I’m going to get my brother. He’s better at healing,” said the fox, apparently satisfied enough to leave them alone for a moment.  
  
When he’d disappeared up the stairs, Edge felt safe enough to focus all his attention on Papyrus. Was he still bleeding? Edge didn’t want to disturb him by unwrapping him enough to find out. He continued stroking the bunny’s ears. He wasn’t at all sure Papyrus would find it comforting, but it didn’t seem to be doing any harm.  
  
After only a minute or two, the door at the top of the stairs opened again and another skeleton fox peered in. “Wow, it really is a wolf! Are you sure it’s safe?”  
  
“Don’t be rude, Blue. If he gets offended he might eat you.”  
  
“Brother! Not funny!”  
  
“Go on, it’s all right. He seems really concerned about his bunny.”  
  
The new fox came down, staring warily until he got to the bottom of the stairs, where he plastered a welcoming grin on his face that wasn’t reflected in his ears. “Hi, I’m Blueberry!”  
  
The fox’s voice was probably shaking because Edge was glaring at him, he realized, and forced his ears to stand up, although there wasn’t much he could do about his actual face. “Call me Edge,” he said in his friendliest menacing growl.  
  
Stretch came down and put a hand on Blueberry’s back either to reassure him or stop him running away. “Let’s see that bunny again, please.”  
  
Edge hesitated a moment. They were foxes. Foxes ate bunnies too, didn’t they? But Stretch had already helped Papyrus, and Edge was in no position to hold their species against them when he himself was a wolf. He held the bundle out and allowed Blueberry to pluck it from his hands.  
  
Papyrus didn’t react at all; maybe he’d fallen asleep. Edge hoped he hadn’t fainted. Blueberry’s ears stood up in surprise as he untucked the makeshift blanket. “Oh, the poor thing! What happened to him?”  
  
Edge didn’t answer, and after a moment Blueberry looked up at him to see what was wrong. Edge’s glower must have intimidated him, because he tried to back up and ran into his brother.  
  
“Never mind, let’s just heal him up,” Stretch suggested.  
  
“Oh, right! Of course.” Blueberry cradled the bunny in one arm and let his fingers hover over Papyrus’s hands. Edge could see a green glow.  
  
“His feet too,” said Stretch, and Blueberry repeated the treatment.  
  
When he was finished, the smaller fox sighed in relief. “That’s a lot better than it was, at least. Let’s take him in the house. Some food and rabbit company will help a lot.” He looked up at Edge, whose ears brushed the ceiling. “If that’s okay?”  
  
Edge nodded. “I’ll come with him.”  
  
“Of course! Just try not to scare the rabbits.” Blueberry seemed to have gotten over his initial fear and forgotten about it entirely.  
  
“Rabbits?” Edge echoed as he ducked to follow them up the stairs.  
  
“You’re not the only one who likes rabbits!”  
  
Blueberry’s non-explanation didn’t clear anything up for him, but Edge let it go. Healing Papyrus was all that mattered now.  
  
The foxes’ house was laid out similarly to his own, but backwards and on a slightly smaller scale. It was oddly familiar and unnerving. He couldn’t help but analyze his surroundings for advantageous positions and escape routes, but none of that mattered—for one thing the monsters here didn’t seem to be any threat to him, and if they threatened Papyrus, he would protect the bunny. He couldn’t quite explain to himself why he was willing to sacrifice so much for a rabbit he’d just met. He’d left Red alone—and he wasn’t sure if he was worried about his brother, or angry at him.  
  
Blueberry led them both into the foxes’ living room, and Stretch retrieved some kind of first-aid kit. Blueberry put a tiny, rabbit-sized monster candy in Papyrus’s mouth. Edge was surprised they had such a thing on hand—but then, they’d said there were rabbits here. Were the rabbits so well cared-for that they got monster candy if they were injured? Perhaps they bred prized rabbits and sold them to other monsters?  
  
Blueberry started wrapping some tiny bandages around Papyrus’s hands, and Edge couldn’t help but be impressed with his dexterity. He was so entranced he didn’t hear when another monster entered the room.  
  
“Who’s that?!” demanded a voice.  
  
Edge’s skull snapped toward the source, and he saw the owner of the voice skitter back into an upstairs doorway, then reappear cautiously. It was a skeleton rabbit, just like Papyrus, perhaps a bit smaller, wearing a purple bandanna.  
  
“Razz, this is Edge,” Stretch introduced him. “Edge, didn’t we ask you not to scare the bunnies?”  
  
Edge folded his ears back. He hadn’t done anything but look at the rabbit.  
  
“I’m not scared!” said Razz, now at the top of the stairs. “What’s he doing here though?”  
  
“He brought us an injured bunny!” Blueberry had finished with the bandages. “There, that should help—uh—Edge, what did you say his name was?”  
  
“Papyrus,” Edge growled.  
  
Maybe Papyrus heard him; he fidgeted but remained asleep.  
  
“Let him rest,” said Stretch. “But it might do him good to be near other bunnies. Razz? Can you get your brother, and ask him if we can borrow some of his clothes?”  
  
Razz nodded and scampered off into one of the rooms upstairs.  
  
“I’ll make him a nest box!” announced Blueberry, and handed the patient back to Edge, along with the rag to cushion him.  
  
Edge held the bunny awkwardly, not too close to his body. What if his scent scared Papyrus? What if being near him was too stressful and would prevent his recovery? Now that the immediate danger was over, maybe he should make himself scarce. Razz didn’t seem to be in captivity here, so maybe the foxes were somehow friendly with rabbits. It was hard to trust them, but they had a better track record than he did so far.  
  
Fortunately Blueberry was quick in preparing a shoe box lined with little towels and blankets, which he placed on a coffee table in front of the sofa, and Edge set the bunny down in the center with relief. Blueberry folded the rag over him like a blanket.  
  
“Do you have anything comforting to put in there with him? Something that reminds him of home and safety. Maybe one of your gloves?” Blueberry asked.  
  
“No, he wouldn’t like that.” Edge frowned, wondering what Red had done with the bunnies’ clothes. No doubt Papyrus would have found a little comfort in something of his brother’s.  
  
“Wow. Wolves are big.”  
  
“Stop staring and come on! How can you be so slow when I’m the one carrying everything?”  
  
Razz had reappeared and was making his way down the stairs with an armful of bunny-sized clothing. Another rabbit had followed him out, this one clad in a fluffy-collared jacket that reminded Edge unpleasantly of his own brother. The new rabbit had stopped at the top of the stairs, but didn’t look so much frightened as casually impressed.  
  
Razz tensed as he walked past Edge but refused to detour to avoid him, and climbed up on the coffee table with Papyrus in his box. “All right. I’ll stay with him for a while, but Slim’s in charge of long-term cuddling.” He hung the clothes neatly on the rim of the box and climbed in.  
  
Slim stared openly at Edge as he followed his brother’s trail and joined the others in the box. There was some minor scuffling for position, carried out very carefully so as not to jostle Papyrus.  
  
Edge watched, bemused. Were the rabbits accustomed to this? Did the foxes often treat injured bunnies here? In any case, they seemed to know what they were doing far more than he did. “Well. It seems. He’s in good hands with you foxes. Even though you’re foxes.” He backed toward the door as he spoke. “I should not impose on you any longer.”  
  
“What? Wait! Where are you going?” Blueberry ran past him and blocked the door. The two strange rabbits poked their heads out of the box, alarmed.  
  
Edge didn’t have any idea where he was going, so he just growled.  
  
“You can’t leave,” said Blueberry. “What will he think if he wakes up and you’re gone?”  
  
Edge supposed he’d be confused by the strange foxes and distraught over his brother, but none of that would be improved by having Edge around. He reached out to move Blueberry out of his way by force.  
  
Blueberry grabbed onto his hand. “He’s your bunny, isn’t he? You’re the only monster here that he knows!”  
  
“He only knows me because I ate him,” Edge growled.  
  
Blueberry cocked his head to the side. Perhaps he didn’t understand how Papyrus was here, alive, if Edge had eaten him.  
  
“Come on, Edge,” said Stretch from behind him. “You can’t come dump this bunny on us and not stick around to help take care of him.”  
  
Edge turned to glare at the orange fox. Stretch didn’t cower, but both bunnies disappeared into the box.  
  
“I don’t know how things are in your world,” Stretch went on. “But here we believe in hospitality.”  
  
Edge growled, feeling somehow insulted, but before he could think of anything to say, Razz piped up.  
  
“Stretch, look! He’s awake!”  
  
“Already?” Blueberry rushed over to the box. Edge stayed behind him—he could easily see past the smaller fox.  
  
Papyrus was stirring, and in a moment he opened his eye sockets and looked around.  
  
“Hey,” Slim greeted him. “Papyrus, right?”  
  
But Papyrus ignored him when he caught sight of Razz. “Sans?” He pushed himself almost to a sitting position.  
  
Razz froze. “Sans?” he repeated, not knowing what to make of the name.  
  
“Sans is his brother,” Edge supplied in a soft growl, then kicked himself for using the present tense. Sans _was_ his brother.  
  
Papyrus blinked, still looking at Razz, then wilted back onto the blankets, turning away from him. Edge felt a twinge of some kind of emotion, and didn’t like it.  
  
“He has a brother!” Blueberry exclaimed. “Oh, he must miss his brother. Where is he? Sans.”  
  
Edge ground his teeth together uncomfortably. “He was—eaten.”  
  
Blueberry cocked his head uncomprehendingly.  
  
“My—my brother ate him.”  
  
“So? Where’s your brother?”  
  
“Back ho—in the universe we came from.”  
  
“Oh! Maybe they can come here too. Or you can take him back home to his brother when he’s a little bit better.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why not?” Blueberry looked at Stretch for confirmation. “I don’t think interdimensional travel is that hard on—”  
  
“My brother did this to him,” Edge interrupted.  
  
“What? Oh, his toes? What happened there? But I’m sure if he apologizes—”  
  
“He won’t.”  
  
Blueberry cocked his head to the other side. “That’s no good. You have to be gentle with bunnies. They’re so small.”  
  
Razz grumbled something about being tough from inside the box. Edge kept his jaws clamped shut.  
  
“Edge?” Stretch ventured. “Do you wanna tell us what happened?”  
  
Edge looked around at the room, deeming it too small and crowded to pace in. So he just glared at Stretch sullenly. He owed it to them to tell them, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.  
  
“All right,” Stretch shrugged. “Maybe after dinner. I’m sure Blue won’t mind entertaining.”  
  
“Of course not! I’ll make tacos!” Blueberry disappeared into the kitchen with enthusiasm.  
  
“I should be going,” said Edge, although he still had no idea where he was going to go. Not back home, at least.  
  
“Nonsense, you’re not gonna leave and abandon your bunny.” Stretch seemed sure of his prediction.  
  
“He’s not _my_ bunny.”  
  
“Then whose bunny is he?”  
  
“I don’t kn—nobody’s! He’s just a bunny!”  
  
“Then why are you so worried about him?”  
  
“Why are _you_ so worried about him? You met him a few minutes ago.” Edge didn’t mention that he’d only met him within the last hour or so.  
  
“Like I said, we’re hospitable to monsters in trouble around here, and you looked pretty desperate. How is it that you didn’t even know how to get him back out after you ate him? Or were you just panicking?”  
  
Edge growled, hating to admit it, but if they were so nice to bunnies around here, maybe it wouldn’t be shameful. “I hadn’t ever eaten a bunny before.”  
  
“Really? Never?” Blueberry exclaimed from the kitchen doorway. Had he been listening in? Edge turned his glare on the smaller fox, but it seemed to have lost its effect.  
  
“Pretty bold move to swallow him when you didn’t know how to get him back out.” Edge wasn’t sure if Stretch was mildly impressed or mildly horrified. “Especially when he was already injured. I take it there was some kinda danger you had to rescue him from?”  
  
Edge froze. You could put it that way, but it hadn’t been his motivation at the time. “Wait a second. You—” He pointed accusingly at Blueberry. “—seem surprised I’ve never eaten a bunny, but you have pet bunnies and you put all this effort into healing some random stranger bunny. Don’t tell me you also _eat_ bunnies!”  
  
“Of course I do! Gosh, you don’t know anything, do you?”  
  
Edge glared harder.  
  
“First of all, they aren’t pets.”  
  
“Darn straight,” said Razz from the box.  
  
“Right, Slim? You wanna give a demonstration?” Blueberry beckoned to the rabbit, who clambered eagerly out of the box.  
  
Stretch rolled his eyes. “They do this at the drop of a hat.”  
  
“Clothes?” Slim asked, shrugging off his jacket.  
  
“Yeah, we have company,” Blueberry answered, and Slim stopped at the jacket.  
  
“Exhibitionists,” Stretch muttered.  
  
Blueberry cupped the bunny in both hands and lifted him to face level, jaws open welcomingly. Edge froze. Slim leaned forward and crawled onto the fox’s bright blue tongue.  
  
“Wait, guys, I don’t think—” Razz spoke up, but Edge couldn’t tear his gaze away from Slim. Blueberry tilted his skull back and swallowed. It took several gulps to down the lanky bunny.  
  
Edge couldn’t believe it. Were the bunnies just snacks after all, and not pets? Why hadn’t Razz done anything to save his brother from the fox? Maybe they really were breeding bunnies and he had a lot of brothers to spare—  
  
The shoe box on the table suddenly fell over with a scuffle, attracting Edge’s attention. Papyrus had tried to climb out and not made it—had he seen that? Even if he hadn’t, Edge wasn’t sure he wanted him out of arm’s reach around these foxes after all. Razz had been flipped out of the box too but tried to soothe Papyrus even as he got to his own feet; but Edge mistrusted him by association with the foxes, and for the lack of concern he’d shown for his own brother. Papyrus was flailing, tangled in the rag Stretch had given him.  
  
Edge reached out and scooped him up, holding him protectively close to his chest. A moment later he regretted it. Being grabbed by a wolf who had eaten him once was probably not the most comforting thing for a bunny who was traumatized by watching another rabbit eaten alive by a fox. But Papyrus didn’t flinch or struggle, instead pressing against Edge’s scarf and looking over his shoulder toward Blueberry.  
  
“What? What’s wrong?” Blueberry had a lot of nerve, pretending he didn’t know. Papyrus flinched at his words and pressed his face into Edge’s scarf.  
  
“How dare you?” Edge snarled at the fox.  
  
“Whoa, calm down. I think we have a misunderstanding here,” Stretch tried to interrupt. At least someone around here cared about his brother enough to lift a finger to stop him being ripped apart by a wolf.  
  
“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Blueberry sounded sincere, but if he were really sorry he wouldn’t have eaten his bunny friend so casually in the first place. “You two really don’t know! Please don’t be scared. Slim is fine, see?” He pulled up the front of his shirt so that they could see the rabbit inside his belly.  
  
Papyrus turned his skull to look, but the instant he caught sight of the bunny sealed away behind blue ectoflesh, his whole body jolted, and he buried his face in Edge’s scarf, shoulders heaving with sobs. Edge shielded him from the foxes with his hand, so that he wouldn’t see them even if he looked around.  
  
“No, don’t be upset.” Blueberry took a step toward them. “Just look, he’s—”  
  
“Stop that,” Edge growled, furious that he was going to have to watch two rabbits dissolve in agony in the same day. “Don’t—” Something clicked in his mind. “Let him out.” If he’d done it for Papyrus, Blueberry could do it for Slim now.  
  
“All right, fine,” Blueberry said, trying to hide the quaver in his voice with a petulant tone. “Can’t have him in there during dinner anyway.” And suddenly the blue magic was gone, and he’d caught Slim in his hands before setting him on the table, borrowing a towel from the shoe box to catch the residual blue slime.  
  
“That was short,” Slim complained.  
  
“You numskull,” Razz shot at him, wrestling the box right-side-up again. “You scared the new guy.”  
  
“I thought he was asleep anyway,” Slim pouted, sprawling on his towel.  
  
Edge stared at him. Why wasn’t he angry? Or scared? Or hurt?  
  
“Wolves aren’t very bright, are they?” Razz said with a mocking grin. His sharp little teeth reminded Edge of Red.  
  
“Hey, be nice,” said Stretch, relaxing again. “They’ve been through a lot, judging by the state of the bunny. Cut them some slack. And lend him some slacks.”  
  
“But both of you need a bath now!” Blueberry added. “Can you get washed up before dinner without my help?”  
  
“Sure thing,” said Slim, not moving a phalange where he lay on the towel.  
  
Stretch rolled his eyes and bundled Slim up in the towel. “Come on, Edge. Bring your bunny. He’ll feel better when he’s clean.”  
  
Edge hesitated, but followed Stretch into the foxes’ bathroom, his presence making it quite cramped. Papyrus was still crying into his scarf but not as hard as before. He did still have some traces of red magic on his bones, especially the joints and crevices, but plunging him into some bath water was unlikely to help his mental state. Still, there was no harm in seeing how Stretch handled Slim and whether Papyrus showed any interest in getting cleaned off.  
  
Stretch filled the bathroom sink with warm water and plopped Slim in without much ceremony, but carefully enough not to dunk the bunny’s skull. Slim crouched down so the water covered his shoulders and Stretch, with a put-upon sigh, started to scrub at his skull with a toothbrush.  
  
It might be relaxing after all. But Papyrus wasn’t watching, face still buried in Edge’s scarf. Edge wasn’t about to surprise the bunny with a bath. He opened his mouth to ask Papyrus if he wanted to join Slim, but found it incredibly awkward to address the bunny directly.  
  
“See? He likes it.” Stretch might have noticed his dilemma.  
  
“That’s a low hurdle,” Edge couldn’t help but snipe back. Slim had seemed pretty happy to climb into Blueberry’s mouth earlier.  
  
“Papyrus?” Slim called softly. Edge felt the tension leave his ears as he was spared the task of getting the bunny’s attention.  
  
Papyrus pushed his face deeper into Edge’s scarf, but one ear rose slightly, betraying that he was listening.  
  
“Nobody’s gonna force you, bunny,” Stretch continued, “but I bet you’ll feel better.” He was gently brushing out Slim’s ears as he spoke.  
  
Papyrus finally turned his skull to watch, although he still clung tight to Edge’s scarf.  
  
“You want to?”  
  
Papyrus looked from the fox to the wolf, a residual tear running down his cheekbone to his jaw. For a moment Edge thought he would refuse, but the bunny dropped his gaze to the floor and nodded.  
  
“All right, come here.” Stretch reached to take him from Edge, but Papyrus entwined his fingers in Edge’s scarf and shook his head.  
  
Stretch let his arm drop to his side. “You want Edge to do it?”  
  
Papyrus buried his face in the scarf again.  
  
“Me? But I’m the one who ate him. He should be terrified of me,” Edge objected.  
  
Stretch flicked an ear. “He seems to trust you more than us.”  
  
Edge grumbled. He wouldn’t be surprised if Papyrus never trusted Blueberry after that display. Stretch seemed all right, though. Perhaps it was too bad Papyrus hadn’t been lucid during most of the foxes’ treatment.  
  
Papyrus looked up at him, and it was a bit hard to make out among his general misery but Edge thought he saw pleading in his eyes. “Very well,” he growled, and started gently untangling the bunny from the rag that was still partly wrapped around him. Then he pulled one glove off with his teeth and carefully shifted Papyrus to his bare hand. The bunny flinched but then looked back at him calmly. He seemed okay. So Edge lowered his hand into the water along with the bunny.  
  
“Want the brush?” Stretch offered. “Just be gentle with it.”  
  
Edge faltered, unwilling to let go of the bunny in case he didn’t have the spirit to keep himself upright, then settled on taking the brush with his other, still-gloved hand. But even the gentlest scrubbing made Papyrus look so miserable that he quickly gave up, handing it back to Stretch.  
  
“Just soaking a bit will still help a lot,” Stretch said. “Papyrus? If you’re up to it you can comb out the fur on your ears with your f—oh. Forget I said that.”  
  
“We’ll have to redo the bandages,” Edge realized. “Can you? I’m not letting your brother near him.”  
  
“Razz will do it,” Stretch assured him. “He may not even need them if the bleeding’s stopped. Get a good meal into him and he’ll soon heal up.”  
  
“Some of his distal phalanges are missing.”  
  
“Well, not much we can do about that, but he’ll get by.”  
  
Edge flexed his free hand in sympathy. Papyrus didn’t give any indication he was listening to their conversation, letting his skull sink halfway into the water, ears trailing across the surface.  
  
“Here, bunny.” Slim half-walked half-swam over to him. “If somebody hands me a sponge I can earn my keep for once by helping you get clean.”  
  
Stretch obligingly passed him a tiny sponge, probably cut from the corner of a normal sponge, and the rabbit set about wiping off any traces of magic on Papyrus’s skull or elsewhere that wasn’t easily dissolving in the water. Then he started pulling the old bandages off his fingers. “Shouldnta got these wet in the first place, canids.”  
  
After he was done, Slim took a step back. “I’m about ready to get out now so he probably is too.”  
  
Edge lifted Papyrus out of the water and onto a full size towel Stretch had laid out on the counter. The fox plucked Slim from the bath and set him there as well. Slim let himself collapse spread-eagle on the fluffy surface, and Stretch dropped a more bunny-sized towel on top of him with a huff.  
  
“You’re as bad as Blueberry,” Slim chuckled. “Worse, because it’s hypocrisy.”  
  
“Whatever.” Stretch handed another small towel to Edge. “I’ll leave you two alone for a bit. Slim can handle himself. Come out when you’re ready and Razz will bandage him up again before dinner.”  
  
Edge grunted in acknowledgment and Stretch left the door cracked behind him. Probably so Slim could push it open if necessary. Certainly not so he’d hear if their wolf guest went savage on the two bunnies.  
  
It was something of a relief to be left alone. Slim wouldn’t bother them, and Papyrus had barely said a word since he’d been freed. So long as nothing happened that required Edge to ask a question, he could relax.  
  
He dabbed at Papyrus with the little towel. The bunny ignored him, content to sit on the fox towel and stare into the middle distance. It was Edge’s first chance to take his time examining the bunny, and easier to see how bad the damage was now that the blood and marrow had been cleaned off.  
  
As he’d surmised, a few of the distal phalanges were missing entirely, and the rest crushed. But Red had missed his thumbs, and all the middle phalanges and other bones were intact. The damaged bones had stopped bleeding as far as Edge could see, which was a relief. The bunny had lost far too much magic.  
  
The bandages on his feet were waterlogged. Slim hadn’t wanted to duck underwater and get them off, and now he seemed to have fallen asleep. Just as Edge was resigning himself to finding Razz and asking him to take care of it, the bunny himself appeared with an armful of clothes.  
  
“Slim, what are you doing? I’ve brought enough clothes for both of you!”  
  
“Razz,” Edge growled. The bunny startled a little and pretended he hadn’t. Edge would have to figure out a less intimidating tone of voice if he was going to hang around bunnies. “Can you help with his bandages. Please.”  
  
“Of course.” Razz jumped onto the counter easily and dropped the clothes next to Slim. “Get dressed, you layabout!” He sat down next to Papyrus and undid the bandages on his toes, with only minimal grumbling. “There’s more gauze in the cabinet there—no, to the left,” he directed Edge, and soon had fresh bandages on. “They’re probably just going to get dirty at dinner and need changing again. But don’t you worry about that!” He patted Papyrus on the shoulder. “Slim, you better not show up for dinner wearing a towel or you’re not getting any tacos,” he warned, and hopped down to the floor.  
  
Papyrus hadn’t responded at all, passively allowing Razz to handle his limbs, not looking at anything in particular. Edge dried his hand on the towel the bunnies were sitting on and put his glove back on, then sorted through the clothing pile Razz had left. If Slim was going to laze about, he could get second pick. There were two black T-shirts, one of which proclaimed “FOX CHOW” in silver letters and the other with a crude rendition of a tough-looking rabbit, labeled “Bad Hare Day.” They were both terrible. Edge shuddered and pushed FOX CHOW toward Slim.  
  
But how was he going to get the shirt on Papyrus? He might be able to pull it down over the bunny’s skull, but that would leave his arms pinned to his sides. If he asked the bunny to raise his arms, would Papyrus listen? Or would it push him over the edge to have to communicate with him after all he’d done? Perhaps Slim would notice his predicament and offer to help. But no, Slim had barely woken up enough to acknowledge his brother’s scolding. Still, he’d rather make demands of a bunny he hadn’t put through hell.  
  
“Slim,” he growled, prodding the sleeping bunny. Maybe his growl was getting less menacing, or maybe Slim was just harder to ruffle, but the bunny didn’t seem alarmed, stretching casually before he opened his eye sockets.  
  
“What is it, wolfy?”  
  
Edge narrowed his own sockets at the impertinent nickname, but didn’t pursue it. “Help me get him dressed.”  
  
Slim was quiet for a moment and Edge thought he might refuse. “Sure,” he said, and got laboriously to his feet, then walked over to stand next to Papyrus. “What do you want me to do?”  
  
Edge grumbled. Why couldn’t the bunny take more initiative? “Lift up his arms. No. Both at once.”  
  
The wolf tried to be very careful sliding the shirt on over Papyrus’s arms and skull, but it caught on his hands anyway. If it hurt, it wasn’t enough to cause any reaction in the despondent bunny.  
  
Then they faced the issue of pants. At least these were more nondescript, not decorated with puns or slogans. Edge settled on having Slim hold them while he lowered Papyrus into them. He watched for any signs of distress as he picked up the bunny, but Papyrus only looked away from him. It was like dressing a lifeless doll.  
  
“We’re ready now,” Edge growled, giving Slim a pointed look. He still hadn’t put on his own clothes.  
  
“Go on out. I’ll catch up.” Slim flopped over on the towel again.  
  
Edge located what appeared to be the laundry hamper and placed Papyrus’s towel and the rag from the lab inside, then carried the bunny out into the living room. Papyrus let his weight fall against the wolf’s chest, and Edge wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.  
  
“You’re just in time!” Blueberry greeted them. “Should I bring your food out here? The kitchen might be a bit small for all of us.”  
  
Blueberry probably knew his house better than Edge did. He opened his mouth to agree, but Papyrus squeaked in terror and tried to burrow underneath his scarf.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Blueberry’s concern seemed genuine.  
  
“He’s afraid of you. He saw you eat a bunny.”  
  
“Aww! Poor bunny, does he not understand? Wasn’t he just taking a bath with Slim?”  
  
“Yes, but—”  
  
“See, bunny! It’s nothing to be scared of. I didn’t hurt him at all.”  
  
Papyrus had mostly hidden himself under Edge’s scarf, and Edge let him.  
  
“Does he not realize Slim is the same rabbit? Does he think there was another rabbit here that I ate?” Blueberry’s concern was yielding way to curiosity.  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
Blueberry stepped closer and reached up to unveil Papyrus. Edge growled deeply, but the fox ignored it. “I’m sorry, bunny! We didn’t mean to scare you! We do that all the time, so I guess I forgot it would be scary if you weren’t used to it. But it’s totally safe!”  
  
Papyrus turned to look at Blueberry. “A wolf—wolf—” It was practically the first thing he’d said since arriving here, and he didn’t seem to be able to complete the sentence.  
  
“A wolf ate his brother,” Edge supplied.  
  
“Do you think—he’s okay, too?” Papyrus continued hopefully.  
  
“Of course he is!” Blueberry answered without hesitation. “No monster would actually hurt a bunny monster like that!”  
  
Papyrus let go of Edge’s scarf, fixated hopefully on Blueberry, but after a moment he looked back at Edge doubtfully. Of course, Blueberry was wrong, and if Papyrus thought about it for a second he would realize. Even if Sans were miraculously alive, the fox was still wrong that nobody would have hurt him. Papyrus knew Red had hurt both of the bunnies.  
  
“No. No, he isn’t. I’m sorry,” Edge said to the bunny, then looked back at Blueberry to glare at him as Papyrus crumpled in his hands.  
  
“What? What happened?” Blueberry didn’t understand.  
  
Edge glared at him. He wasn’t going to spell it out in front of Papyrus. “Things are different in our universe.”  
  
“Well, of course. But you don’t seem like some kinda vicious cannibal.”  
  
Edge bristled. “My brother isn’t a cannibal.”  
  
“Your brother? Do you mean that your brother ate—and he’s the one who—what did he do to that bunny’s toes, anyway?”  
  
Edge didn’t answer, but cradled Papyrus closer and growled warningly at the fox.  
  
Blueberry backed away, his own fur bristling. “Okay, sorry! You don’t seem like the kind of wolf that would eat another monster.” He sounded less than completely certain of this. “So let’s just have dinner. That bunny needs some proper food.”  
  
Edge calmed himself and sat down on the couch as the fox disappeared into the kitchen. Papyrus didn’t seem to be in any mood to eat, curled limply in Edge’s hands, but it wouldn’t hurt to put food in front of him and see what happened.  
  
“—but don’t get used to it!” Blueberry reappeared, talking to Stretch, and set a plate bearing a couple of tacos in front of Edge on the coffee table, followed by a miniature one for Papyrus. Stretch and Razz, riding on his shoulder, already had theirs.  
  
Razz hopped down onto the table, and Edge was impressed he didn’t spill anything. “Come on, Papyrus. It’s good.”  
  
Edge carefully set Papyrus on the table, but Papyrus didn’t move to sit up or respond at all. Razz set down his own plate to pull on his arm, but it had no effect.  
  
“Look,” Razz urged, giving up on that strategy and sitting down with his own taco to show Papyrus how good it was. If Blueberry had made the bunny-sized tacos, it was a testament to his dexterity. They were still a bit unwieldy for the rabbits, but Razz seemed to have no trouble.  
  
“Wait. What’s in these?” Edge asked before taking a bite.  
  
“Oh, uh, you know, the usual. Lettuce and cheese and taco meat.”  
  
“Taco meat? Can bunnies eat that?”  
  
Blueberry laughed, realizing his concern. “Oh, of course! It’s actually made of mushrooms. I bet in your rough-n-tough world they make tacos out of bunnies, huh?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Wait, really?” Blueberry’s face fell.  
  
Edge wasn’t terribly hungry, Stretch seemed reluctant to touch his food, and Blueberry hadn’t served himself yet. Razz chewed awkwardly in the silence, until Slim appeared, hopping up on the table. “Hey, where’s mine?”  
  
“Oh! Sorry, I’ll get it.” Blueberry seemed glad for the interruption.  
  
“Why’s everyone so quiet? What’s wrong with Papyrus?” Slim asked. Nobody answered. “Well, maybe this will cheer him up.” He pulled the unresisting bunny into a sitting position and tied something around his neck. “It’s not exactly the right color, but better than nothing.”  
  
“Hey, that’s my bandanna!”  
  
“You never wear this one,” Slim dismissed his brother’s protest as he stepped back, revealing a reddish-purple cloth tied around Papyrus’s neck.  
  
Edge was mystified. “How is that supposed to help?”  
  
“Papyrus? Do you like it?” Slim asked.  
  
Papyrus blinked and looked down at it, then nodded, leaning back against the nesting box that was still on the table. He didn’t seem excited at all, but he had responded to the question, which was a big improvement.  
  
“How did you do that?” Edge demanded of Slim.  
  
He grinned, pleased to have a secret from the wolf. “I knew I’d heard the name Papyrus before. And then I remembered—I met him once, ages ago. He told me it was ‘unwholesome’ to hang out with foxes. Ha ha, he didn’t know the half of it!”  
  
“You met him? The same rabbit? But I brought him with me from our world.”  
  
Slim shrugged. “Maybe he has a parallel universe doppelganger?”  
  
“I suppose that could—wait.” Edge frowned. He’d selected the previous destination on the machine when he’d come here. He hadn’t paid too much attention to the display, but when had that previous visit occurred? He had a feeling it was more recent than it ought to have been. Very recent.  
  
“What is it?” Blueberry had returned with plates for himself and Slim in time to see Edge freeze up.  
  
“I gave him too much credit,” Edge grumbled, disappointed that he’d been even begrudgingly impressed with Red for actually catching rabbits.  
  
“Who?” Blueberry asked as Slim dug into his tacos.  
  
“My brother. He’s been—he must have been—coming here to catch rabbits.”  
  
“Oh? Do you not have rabbits in your world?”  
  
“Of course we do.”  
  
“Then why would he come all the way here? Unless!” Blueberry brightened. “Maybe he met a special bunny here who he particularly liked?”  
  
“No.” Edge glared at him. How dense could these foxes be?  
  
“Then why go to all the trouble?” Blueberry was openly clueless, but Stretch looked uncomfortable.  
  
“Why do you think?” Edge asked, looking at the taller fox.  
  
“Our bunnies are easier to catch,” Stretch answered reluctantly. “They don’t know the danger.”  
  
“I don’t think they’re easy to catch!” Blueberry objected. “Half the time they run off as soon as they see me.” He was clearly a bit hurt by the bunnies’ reaction.  
  
“You wouldn’t catch one that didn’t want to be caught,” Stretch reminded him gently.  
  
“Of course not! That wouldn’t be fun for…” Blueberry trailed off, then looked up at Edge with quivering moist eyelights. “Your brother doesn’t care if the bunnies have fun, does he?”  
  
Edge clenched his jaw and shook his head.  
  
Blueberry laughed. “He must be pretty brave. Those bunnies must be furious! I wouldn’t want a bunch of …” He trailed off again, realizing that he was the target of several pitying stares.  
  
Edge flicked an ear in annoyance. Blueberry had demonstrated that he had a concept of bunnies not being around any longer after being eaten when he’d asked if Papyrus had mistakenly thought he’d killed Slim; so why couldn’t he wrap his skull around it?  
  
“Let’s not think about eating rabbits when we could be eating these tacos,” Stretch suggested.  
  
“Okay!” Blueberry perked up immediately.  
  
Razz and Slim had finished their own food, and Slim had pulled out just the lettuce from Papyrus’s portion and was having some success in coaxing him to eat it. Edge poked at one of his tacos. Would it be edible? He could go without food for a while, but the ordeal of the day had left him tired and it might be wise to take this opportunity to replenish his energy stores.  
  
Finally he bit into the taco. It was different than what he was used to, but it wasn’t bad. He could practically taste Blueberry’s enthusiasm for cooking. He ate it and the other one too, and when he looked up again Papyrus was leaning on Slim’s shoulder. Razz and Blueberry disappeared into the kitchen along with the empty plates.  
  
“So, Edge,” Stretch addressed him. “Where does the 5,000-pound wolf sleep when it visits a fox’s house?”  
  
“What?” Edge definitely did not weigh 5,000 pounds.  
  
“You know, the one about the 5,000-pound gorilla at the movie theater?”  
  
Edge’s ears started to fold back.  
  
“Hey, don’t get _ear_ -ritated. I’m saying you can sleep wherever you want. My room is smaller but pretty spacey and Razz won’t let me live in utter squalor. And I’m sure Blueberry won’t mind if—”  
  
“I’ll stay out here.” He wasn’t sure he would fit comfortably on the foxes’ couch, but he could sleep on the floor and be in reach of the bunnies’ box on the table, and not have to evict either of the foxes from their rooms.  
  
“All right.” Stretch’s tail waved uncertainly. “I’ll get you a blanket or somethin’.”  
  
“Are you guys ready for bed?” Blueberry reappeared. “You’ve had a long day after all! Razz is almost finished cleaning up and then we’ll leave you in peace.” He glanced longingly at Slim, but the bunny seemed to be asleep, leaning against the side of the box and Papyrus.  
  
Stretch found a blanket, but then Blueberry replaced it with a bigger blanket and several pillows. Once the foxes were gone, and Razz had disappeared into Stretch’s room as well, Edge made himself as comfortable as he could. He was normally able to fall asleep easily—it was an advantage to be able to rest when you had the chance, sometimes—but his mind kept returning to his brother, or Papyrus’s brother.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit [my tumblr](http://nom-the-skel.tumblr.com) for art and stuff.


	3. Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or, Red is a Mean Wolf but a Pretty Good Brother

“Shh, don’t wake them!”  
  
“I’m not, I’m just starting breakfast! Do you think the smell will wake them up? It would be a pretty nice way to wake up, though!”  
  
“What did I tell you? Look, he’s awake!”  
  
Edge had let his ears perk up to follow Blueberry’s and Razz’s whispered conversation, but he didn’t bother opening his eyes. He was safe enough here; he could rest until breakfast was ready.  
  
“See? He’s not awake,” Blueberry hissed. “I’m being quiet.”  
  
Edge opened one eye in time to see Razz roll his eyelights.  
  
“Oh! You were right.” Blueberry saw and stopped keeping his voice down. “Good morning, Edge! Where’s Papyrus?”  
  
Papyrus? Edge blinked, lifting his skull to look at the box on the table. Slim was sprawled on the hard surface next to the box, alone. Panic shot through him and he froze. Blueberry peered into the box, but evidently didn’t find the missing bunny, as he kept looking, checking under the table.  
  
Edge was about to jump to his feet and give the search a greater sense of urgency, but he felt something move, pulling on his scarf. Relief washed away the panic as he reached up and felt the form of a small skeleton curled up in the red fabric. “Here he is,” he growled, so that Blueberry and Razz wouldn’t worry—not that they seemed unduly concerned.  
  
Blueberry poked Slim awake. “Aww, look at that! Why didn’t you come join me, too?”  
  
“I was asleep,” Slim grumbled, and climbed into the box.  
  
Razz opened his mouth to say something to his brother, but Blueberry cut him off. “Aw, Razz, let him sleep until breakfast is ready. I can cuddle with him any time!”  
  
Razz crosses his arms. “Just show enough restraint with your ‘cuddling’ that you don’t freak out the guests.”  
  
“Of course! I would never!” Blueberry seemed overly affronted for a fox who had already disproved that statement. “Besides. If they’re sleeping out here we could have the whole night to ourselves.”  
  
Edge must have let his ears fold back at the idea of Blueberry eating the bunny even behind closed doors, because he caught Razz giving him a sympathetic glance.   
  
“Too much to ask you two to abstain for twenty-four hours, huh?” Razz sniped as he hopped off the table.   
  
“We’ve gone twenty-four hours before!” Blueberry argued with the technicalities rather than the sentiment.  
  
“I meant twenty-four hours without eating him, not leaving him in there that long.”  
  
“So did I! Although it’s true either way!”  
  
The pair had nearly escaped into the kitchen but were stopped by Edge’s horrified woof. “You left him in there for a day? And he wasn’t...digested?”  
  
“Sure! He’s fine.”  
  
“It’s all about intent,” explained Razz, taking pity on the ignorant monster.  
  
Edge glanced toward Papyrus, hoping he had fallen back asleep and wasn’t listening to a conversation about such triggering subject matter. It made sense, though. He hadn’t done any damage to the bunny after swallowing him because he hadn’t intended to do so. Perhaps if Red weren’t so cruel he could have at least finished off his brother more humanely. But still, it seemed risky to leave a bunny in there for so long a time. Did Blueberry have to stay awake that whole time in case his intent faltered or he forgot Slim was there? “Aren’t you afraid you’ll—hurt him—by accident?”  
  
Blueberry laughed. “Oh, I have done! A few times!”  
  
“What?”  
  
Slim had heard them talking about him and leaned his skull and arms over the edge of the box. He looked whole, what Edge could see of him from here, but—could that be how he’d gotten those scars?  
  
“Blue!” Razz scolded.   
  
“What? It’s true! Besides, you know he doesn’t really mind.”  
  
“It hurts a lot,” Slim added with a lazy grin.  
  
“He’s such a masochist,” Blueberry teased.   
  
“You’re telling me you—“ Edge couldn’t quite say it out loud, in case Papyrus was listening after all. “And yet you still—?”  
  
“Oh yeah,” Blueberry confirmed. “There was nothing left of him!”  
  
Edge resisted the urge to grasp Papyrus closer to himself because that would definitely wake him up if he wasn’t already. This was worse than he’d imagined. And it made no sense. “But he’s alive?”  
  
“Of course! What kind of monster do you take me for?”  
  
Edge stared at the fox, who had just admitted to letting his bunny friend digest away to nothing—somehow, repeatedly.   
  
“Blueberry,” Razz interjected. “He doesn’t know about the pills. You’re confusing him.”  
  
“He doesn’t—oh!” Blueberry pressed his hands to his teeth in surprise “I guess he wouldn’t!”  
  
“Let’s demonstrate,” suggested Slim, earning a stern glance from not only Razz but Blueberry as well.   
  
“What pills?” Edge growled, patience thinning.   
  
“In case of just such an accident,” Blueberry started to explain.   
  
Razz mumbled something about not believing it had been purely accidental.   
  
“Of course it was an accident! It’s always an accident.” Blueberry seemed insulted but Slim was leering at him from the box.   
  
“As I was saying,” Blueberry continued, “we have a remedy for...accidental digestion. It’s not really safe to eat a bunny without keeping it on-hand.”  
  
“How long—how soon do you have to take it after—?” Edge sat up, keeping Papyrus cupped against his scarf, no longer caring if the bunny woke up, even though a part of him warned against raising false hopes.  
  
“Oh—I don’t know. I always took it as soon as I noticed, so—a few hours. But it should still work after a day or so.”  
  
“Give it to me.”  
  
“But your bunny is right there? Or do you just want it for later, for safety’s sake? I’m sure we can spare some but I’ll—”  
  
“Not for him.”  
  
“Edge? Did you—eat another bunny and—?”  
  
“No. For my—for his brother.”  
  
“Oh! ...Oh.” Blueberry was delighted to finally understand what he wanted, but his ears drooped as he realized the implications.   
  
“It’s been about a day. It should still work, correct?”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”  
  
“There’s no time to lose. I’ll—you four take care of Papyrus while I go—administer it.” There was no reason he couldn’t shove it down Red’s throat by force. “What are—are there any side effects? To the wolf—fox.”  
  
“Well, it does take a lot out of ya,” Blueberry laughed. “It takes more magic to put a bunny back together than you got out of deconstructing him.”  
  
Edge frowned. That could be an issue—he didn’t want to risk killing Red—but not insurmountable. “All right. Is there anything else I should know?”  
  
“Uh … I guess don’t eat two bunnies at once, because it can only work on the last one.”  
  
“So it won’t work for Sans if he’s eaten another bunny since then.” Edge’s frown deepened, but it was still worth trying. It wasn’t like Red to go hunting on a daily basis. “How many do you have?”  
  
“Hey, they’re not cheap, you know.”  
  
“Oh. I can pay you back.”  
  
“Nah, it’s fine. But why? Are you gonna—do you think you’re gonna digest Papyrus?”  
  
“No! I told you, it’s for my brother. He—may not want to take it.”  
  
“If he needs to bring a bunny back, why wouldn’t he?”  
  
Edge narrowed his sockets at the fox. Was Blueberry really so dense, or was he just unable to assimilate facts that didn’t fit into his optimistic worldview? “Just give me a couple of pills. The sooner I go, the better.”  
  
***  
  
There was no sign of Red in the house. It hadn’t deteriorated too much—it felt like Edge had been gone a long time, but it hadn’t actually been so long as to give Red a chance to make a complete mess of the house.  
  
He was probably just out drinking, and if he was filling up on greasy fries and burgers, that wasn’t all bad because it would help build up his magic levels. And it gave Edge time to prepare. The kitchen was just as he’d left it, except that most of the stuff that Red had spread out on the table was haphazardly shoved into the refrigerator. Still, there was plenty to work with.  
  
He heard Red come in just as he was taking the lasagna out of the oven, and hurried to plate a serving and hide a pill inside the layers before his brother made it to the kitchen.  
  
“Oh. You’re back,” Red commented from the doorway.  
  
Edge turned, his ears dipping as he saw the cracks in Red’s skull. “Does your eye hurt? Eat this.”  
  
“Nah, I got something better.” The smaller wolf raised his hand. Edge hadn’t even noticed he was carrying a bunny—it looked at first glance a lot like Razz, and his sockets widened in shock. But a moment’s inspection showed it was a different skeleton, just with a similar fur color—smooth-boned, wearing some kind of vest with a fluffy blue lining, a very revealing crop-top and matching shorts. The bunny was clearly frozen in terror.  
  
Edge placed the plate of lasagna on the table with a fork, careful to keep the pill side facing Red. He didn’t chew much; he probably wouldn’t notice it. “Nonsense! My lasagna is much healthier than some monster you haven’t even washed off.”  
  
“Well, maybe I was gonna wash him off.” Red ambled toward the sink, tugging at the rabbit’s vest. It folded its arms to stop him undressing it. He wrenched the bunny’s limb, making it yelp in pain, but it still held onto its vest with its other hand.  
  
“Give me that,” Edge scolded, snatching the bunny from his brother’s grasp. It may have been a bit rough, but the bunny would thank him later if it survived.  
  
“What gives, Boss? You know I need magic to try an’ heal my skull. And whose fault is that?”  
  
“I know!” Edge glared furiously because Red was right. “And that’s why I made you a special lasagna! Eat it. It’s…medicated.” His ears folded all the way back, and he hoped Red interpreted the guilt he was clumsily hiding as a result of Red’s injury and not of the lie he was telling. The bunny squirmed and whimpered in his grasp, but he kept hold of it; if it escaped, it would be trapped in the house and Red could pounce on it easily.  
  
“Not that I don’t like your lasagna or nothin’, Boss, but you know there’s nothing like a live rabbit for sheer magic.” Red held out his hand expectantly.  
  
Edge clutched the bunny tighter, making it squeak. He didn’t have an argument against that, except that it was wrong to eat bunnies—Did he believe that? He wasn’t sure. Maybe he could give Red the bunny after Sans was safely resurrected—Red would probably need the magic even more then, and if Papyrus got his brother back, what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. But it would feel ridiculous to go to all that effort to get Sans back, just to sacrifice another innocent bunny in his stead. In any case, he absolutely couldn’t risk Red eating this bunny before he got Sans back, or Papyrus’s brother would be lost for good.  
  
“C’mon, Boss, I’ll catch you one later if you want one so bad.” Red reached for the bunny.  
  
Edge stuffed it face-first into his mouth. Red watched, jaws parted slightly in shock, as Edge gulped it down.  
  
“Wow, Boss. If you were that hungry, it’s not like I wouldn’ta shared some of the lasagna with ya.”  
  
Edge had no explanation for his behavior, so he guided Red to the chair in front of the plate. “Sit. Eat.”  
  
“I dunno. There’s somethin’ fishy about this.”  
  
“There’s no fish in it. I used the rest of that spinach though.”  
  
“Why are you so set on me eatin’ this and not anythin’ else?” Red turned to look at him suspiciously.  
  
Edge pushed his brother’s skull back toward the table, careful not to touch the cracks.  
  
“You said it’s medicated, huh?” Red showed no signs of eating the lasagna. “With what, exactly?”  
  
Edge was tempted to take a bite himself to demonstrate it was safe, but he doubted the purple bunny would appreciate it. “It’ll help. Don’t you trust your own brother?”  
  
“Course, Boss, but you’re bein’ weird. You got all upset over some bunnies, then you ate one and ran off, then you come back and steal my latest catch, because you want me to eat this lasagna instead?”  
  
“You can’t trust bunnies. They might be—riddled with disease! Or something! This is much better.”  
  
Red laughed. “Ya think the ones that are slow enough for even me to catch are probably sick?”  
  
“Of course not!”  
  
“Then I don’t see why ya _carrot_ all if I eat ‘em.”  
  
“I…wanted them.”  
  
Red looked at him with consternation. “Sure, Boss, but why? I know you could catch all the bunnies you wanted if you put your mind to it, and if you’re too busy or whatever I wouldn’t mind sharing. But it’s weird—it’s like ya don’t want me eatin’ ‘em at all.”  
  
“Eat your lasagna and then we’ll talk.” Edge almost served himself a square, but he remembered the purple bunny and shuffled awkwardly in place.  
  
“All right, you’re the boss, Boss.” Red picked up the fork and cut into the lasagna.  
  
Edge covered his face with one hand. What was he doing? Tricking his brother into taking something that might hurt him in order to help a rabbit he just met yesterday?  
  
“Boss? What is this?” Red dug the pill out of the tomato sauce and rolled it between his phalanges.  
  
“I told you it was medicated.”  
  
“Yeah, I thought that meant you put some fortifying herbs in it or somethin’. This isn’t a monster candy.”  
  
“Just take it, Red.”  
  
“Sure, Boss, but can ya at least tell me what it is and where you got it? You know you can’t trust any random pill someone sells ya ‘round here.”  
  
“What is this, big brother mode? You’re the one who isn’t picky about what you put in your body.”  
  
Red let the pill clatter on the plate and forked the untainted lasagna into his mouth. Edge sat and watched him eat until he finished and stood up, leaving the plate and fork on the table.  
  
“Red. Your medicine.”  
  
“Stars, Edge, why is it that important to you? The lasagna’s good, it’ll probably heal my eye right up.”  
  
“Please, Red. I’m not going to drop this until you do.”  
  
“What’re you gonna do, hold my mouth open and stuff it down my throat?”  
  
Edge didn’t answer. He couldn’t say the thought hadn’t occurred to him.  
  
“Stars above, Boss. Fine. Get me a glass of water?”  
  
Edge kept his eyes on his brother the entire time he retrieved a glass and filled it from the kitchen sink faucet. It was awkward and Red’s ears wilted with hurt, but he didn’t trust his brother not to pocket the pill if he turned his back. Wordlessly, he set the glass on the table and watched Red swallow the pill and wash it down.  
  
“I’m gonna lie down and digest this,” Red announced and turned to head for the couch, then stopped. “How’s your bunny doin’?”  
  
Edge glanced down. He’d barely thought about the bunny after swallowing it, but his ectobelly was manifest and the little monster was curled up inside. “He’s fine.”  
  
“Funny, I woulda thought he’d be startin’ to lose cohesion by now. I guess that’s what you get for not scarin’ ‘im better before you eat ‘im.” Red shrugged and retreated to the couch.  
  
Edge put his dishes in the sink and followed him.  
  
Red was already lounging on the couch with the TV droning quietly. “What, Boss, are ya waitin’ for that mysterious pill to take effect? I hope it wasn’t poison.”  
  
Edge flinched. Red sat up.  
  
“It wasn’t, right?”  
  
“Of course not!” Edge spat.  
  
Red lay back again. “Sorry, Boss, just weird is all.”  
  
Edge sighed in resignation and sat down next to him, forcing him to move his legs to make room. “I guess you’ll find out, if it works. It’s to—bring back—that rabbit you ate. I hope you haven’t been hunting since then.”  
  
“Stars, Boss, who sold you that? Sounds like a sugar pill for sure. And why did you—You want all the bunnies to yourself that bad? I thought you didn’t like fast food.”  
  
“No. I don’t want—I don’t like this. Eating bunnies.”  
  
“Boss, you know I gotta.”  
  
“Maybe. Have you tried—not?”  
  
“I’m a wolf, Boss. It’s natural.”  
  
Edge studied a stain on the carpet. He wasn’t emotionally prepared for this. He couldn’t actually ask his brother not to eat rabbits, if that was the only way for him to get enough magic. “If you need it, you need it. But I need that particular one back.”  
  
“Boss, how did you get attached in the five minutes you saw ‘im? He ain’t comin’ back.”  
  
The pity in Red’s tone made Edge bristle. Anger was easier to deal with. “We’ll see,” he said coldly.  
  
Red closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, soon dozing off for real. Edge stayed where he was, eyelights focused on the TV but not paying it any attention. Minutes ticked by. Was Red right again? Now that he was back home, not surrounded by the odd foxes and their bunny companions, the concept of restoring an accidentally-digested bunny seemed absurd. Maybe the pill wouldn’t work. But Blueberry had used it before. Maybe it only worked in the foxes’ weird universe—or maybe it only worked if the monster who’d eaten the bunny willed it to. Edge’s soul sank. That seemed unpleasantly likely. He should have left well enough alone, left Papyrus with the bunny-friendly foxes and come back to pick up the pieces of his own life, as it had been before—   
  
Red squirmed uncomfortably on the couch next to him. “Ugh, I don’t know what it is but it’s doing something.”   
  
Edge stood up. He hoped this wouldn’t be painful for either party. There were so many things he should have asked Blueberry before rushing off. The fox had said it would be draining—the lasagna was a good start, but he had better get out some monster candies too.  
  
But before he could, Red curled up on himself with an uncomfortable-sounding grunt. “Boss, seriously, what was that?”  
  
“I told you. It’s reforming the rabbit.”  
  
“That ain’t a thing,” Red argued, his voice increasingly pained.  
  
“I didn’t think it would hurt.” Edge hoped it would be over soon.  
  
“It doesn’t hurt exactly, but—nggh!” Red rolled over onto his front, ears pinned back, breath labored. “Why was that bunny this important to you, Boss?”  
  
“He’s Papyrus’s brother.”  
  
“Who’s Papyrus?”  
  
“The other bunny—the one I ate. I didn’t eat him.”  
  
“You’re not makin’ sense, Boss.”  
  
“Roll up your shirt.”  
  
Red only grunted. Perhaps he didn’t have the energy to comply; he was limp and unresisting as Edge rolled him onto his side and pushed his jacket and shirt out of the way. Something was definitely forming inside his belly.  
  
“It’s working.”  
  
Red didn’t respond, his skull resting against the couch, sockets open but empty. Edge went to find the monster candy after all and pushed one between his brother’s teeth with a wry grin at the lengths he’d gone to earlier to avoid forcing a pill down Red’s throat by force.  
  
Red swallowed obediently, and a moment later his eyelights flared back to life, but he looked more reproachful than grateful. Edge checked on the reforming bunny again; his bones had taken shape but his ears and tail were missing. “A little longer, Red.”  
  
Presumably ears and tail were included. Unless Slim’s had grown back more slowly after he’d been recovered? He should have just brought Blueberry with him to supervise.  
  
Red’s eyelights dimmed but didn’t go out this time as he went limp on the couch. Edge watched anxiously; considering Red’s low HP, the magic drain could conceivably be enough to dust him. Had Edge chosen a rabbit over his brother, yet again, going so far as to kill him? He slipped another monster candy between Red’s teeth. It fell out, but he put it back and turned his brother’s skull so that it slid down his tongue toward his throat. Another moment, and Red grunted.  
  
“What is it?” Edge was still cradling his skull in one hand.  
  
“Moving.”  
  
Edge set him gently against the cushion and checked on the bunny again. He looked entirely whole, and although he wasn’t moving now, his eyelights were glowing, brighter than Red’s even through the intervening ectoplasm.  
  
“Good,” Edge said. “Red, you have to dispel your magic. Dismiss your ectoflesh.”  
  
Red looked like he would’ve liked to argue, but he was too tired. A moment later the red magic was gone and the blue bunny was sitting on the couch between Red’s ribs and pelvis.  
  
“Good bunny. Don’t be afraid.” Edge reached for him. He was solid, no sign of wear and tear on his bones or ears. In fact, even his toes and fingers seemed undamaged. The bunny looked at him, then glanced down toward the purple bunny still encased in his stomach, and ran, jumping down and hiding under the couch.   
  
Oh well, he wouldn’t get far with the front door closed.  
  
“Boss. Did it actually work?” Red asked weakly.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I can’t believe it. I hope you’re happy.”  
  
Edge didn’t answer. He was relieved it had worked—it would have been awful to do this to Red and not get the bunny back to show for it. But now he was mostly concerned with the effect it had had on his brother.  
  
“Boss—that really—took a lot out of me…”  
  
Edge’s ears stood up in alarm at Red’s labored speech. He wasn’t out of the woods yet. What if he dusted?  
  
There was one more monster candy in the first aid kit. Edge set it on Red’s tongue, and his eyelights gained a little brightness, but he remained limp and his breathing didn’t get any easier. The fur on his ears looked dull and colorless.  
  
“That’s the last candy. You have to eat something,” Edge ordered.  
  
“Sure, Boss. You’re gonna hafta spoon-feed me though.”  
  
Edge hesitated. Food would be better than nothing, but nowhere near as efficient as the candy. Should he run to the store and see if they had more? It had been sold out last time he’d been there.  
  
Would those greasy fries Red loved be more effective than lasagna? But he couldn’t imagine leaving Red in this state, risking coming back to a pile of dust. Besides, if he opened the door Sans might get out, and now he knew the bunny was from a softer universe he didn’t expect him to survive five minutes in the wolf version of Snowdin.   
  
But now the monster candies were gone, what in the house was really magic-dense?   
  
The purple bunny. Maybe not the easiest thing to eat, but it was likely the only food whose magic content rivaled what Red had lost. He’d rejected the idea earlier, but now that he faced the decision, he had to choose his brother over a strange bunny he’d met a few minutes ago.   
  
Would Sans realize what he’d done and never forgive him? It didn’t matter.   
  
He held his hand ready to catch the purple bunny and dismissed his magic. He was inexperienced at this but his reflexes were good and he snatched up the bunny before it fell. It looked up at him, somehow less scared than before but more confused.   
  
“Sorry about this,” he apologized to them both as he pulled Red upright.   
  
“Wait!” the bunny squeaked, finding its voice as Edge pushed its skull between Red’s jaws. He couldn’t wait; every second counted. Otherwise he would have gotten those indigestible clothes off the bunny first—besides, if it had time to make a fuss that would make things more difficult with Sans.   
  
Red perked up a little at the taste of rabbit on his tongue. Edge’s greatest fear right now was that Red wouldn’t have it in him to swallow, but apparently the promise of an influx of magic was enough to motivate him to use the last of his energy. The rabbit inadvertently helped by curling up small, no doubt out of terror.   
  
Edge felt awful to have put the purple bunny through the experience not once but twice, but it couldn’t be helped. “At least try not to make it hurt this time, please,” he muttered, but Red showed no sign of having heard, eyes closed as he finished gulping the bunny down.  
  
Red’s shirt had fallen more or less back into place when Edge sat him up, but once the bunny was gone the taller wolf straightened his brother’s clothes properly. He didn’t want to see what happened to the purple bunny. “Red? How do you feel?”  
  
“Little better,” Red answered. “And pretty confused. What in stars’ name is going on, Boss?” His eyelights were brighter, but he hadn’t recovered enough yet to put any vitriol into the question.   
  
“It’s—hard to explain.” Edge could barely explain it to himself. “I’m taking that blue rabbit back to his brother.”  
  
“You mean you’re gonna eat him?”  
  
“No. I told you I didn’t eat his brother.”  
  
“Boss, I saw you.”  
  
“I let him out. Like you did with the blue one after he reformed.”  
  
Red seemed to accept this.   
  
“How come you’re suddenly okay with me eatin’ the purple one?”  
  
“It’s not okay. I just couldn’t let you dust.”  
  
“That’s funny, Boss. You really _crack_ me up.”  
  
“If you’re well enough to make bad jokes, I’ll leave you alone just as soon as I get the bunny out from under the couch.” Red was looking better, the replenishment of his magic already reflected in the color of his fur. Edge could leave him to his own devices with the unfortunate purple bunny and any other bunnies he caught in the future. Maybe he’d just stay with the foxes, if they’d have him.  
  
“You don’t want the purple one back? I thought you were hoarding all the bunnies.”  
  
Edge glared at him. “I don’t want to watch what you’re doing to that bunny.”  
  
“Yeah, fine, but aren’t you collecting bunnies for whatever reason? Maybe to train for your evil army of the night? Or for your bunny rescue project? I dunno if it’ll take off; people won’t trust a bunny rescue run by a wolf.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“’Cause I think I got enough magic I’m not gonna dust before I can shove the rest of that lasagna in my face. You can have ‘im back now if you want.”  
  
“You mean what’s left of him?”  
  
“Well, yeah. But that should be most of him.”   
  
Red started to pull up his shirt, and Edge averted his gaze.  
  
“Look, Boss, he’s fine.”  
  
“What? Why isn’t he writhing?” Edge looked back, then knelt to see the bunny more closely. It seemed—just as Red had evaluated it—fine. It was just sitting there, looking back at him, perhaps a bit tired. Red must have drained a good deal of magic from it in the short time it had been in there.  
  
“You did specifically tell me not to hurt ‘im.”  
  
“Yes, but—how?” He realized it must not be impossible, considering he hadn’t hurt the bunnies he’d swallowed himself. But Red had absorbed magic from the bunny, and Edge had merely stored them inside himself.  
  
“I dunno.” Red shrugged. “I just gotta dispel my magic, right?”  
  
“Uh, yes!” This was moving so quickly. A moment ago Edge had been prepared to walk out forever and now Red had gone from tormenting bunnies for fun to—well, still using the rabbit for his own benefit, but in a much more humane way.  
  
The purple bunny toppled into Edge’s waiting hands on release and smiled up at him, alert and relatively unruffled. “That wasn’t so bad now that I know you two weren’t trying to kill me.”  
  
Edge exchanged a glance with Red. “You’d better tell him now. It’ll just get more awkward.”  
  
“Oh, uh. Sure. Hey bunny. I was totally gonna eat ya, but Boss stopped me.”  
  
“You did eat me, though.”  
  
“Yeah, I mean in the painful, bad way where you die.”  
  
The bunny shivered, still lying in Edge’s hands. “Sounds like I came within a _hare’s_ -breadth of dusting!”  
  
Red laughed. “You know what? I like this bunny.” He pushed himself off the couch and headed toward the kitchen, tail dragging. “I hope you didn’t put any more surprises in that lasagna.”  
  
Edge devoted his attention to the bunny. “My apologies. For eating you. And feeding you to my brother. It was necessary at the time.”  
  
“No real harm done, I guess.” The bunny sat up, wiping at the red fluids on his vest.  
  
“What’s your name, bunny?”  
  
“They call me Lust. I guess I confirm some bunny stereotypes. You know, if you want to apologize for all this, I wouldn’t turn down something to eat if you have any vegetables.”  
  
“Of course. Sans is probably hungry, too. But—can I request your further assistance, Lust? He’s hiding under the couch and I don’t know if I can coax him out. My brother was very rough with him yesterday, I’m afraid.”  
  
“Uhh, sure, okay. I’ll talk to him.” Lust peered over the side of Edge’s hands as if he was going to hop down unassisted, so Edge hurriedly put him down.  
  
“Tell him I just want to make sure he’s okay and take him to his brother.”  
  
“Gotcha,” said Lust, scurrying under the couch.  
  
***  
  
There wasn’t enough space to stand up, so Lust had to crawl. There was a good deal of detritus under here, in contrast to the rest of the house—wrappers, dust (the innocent kind, presumably), a few coins. But after only a few moments, he spotted the bunny he was here to see, sitting naked with his arms around his knees.  
  
“Just the dustbunny I was looking for!”  
  
The blue bunny—Sans, the wolf had called him—flinched.  
  
“Yeah, sorry, bad joke. That big wolf sent me to talk to you.”  
  
“Stay back!”  
  
“Just to talk. My name’s Lust.”  
  
“I don’t talk to ambassadors of wolves.”  
  
“He seems like not a bad wolf.”  
  
“He ate me alive!”  
  
“Oh, no, not that one. I think that was his brother.” At least, that was what Lust presumed from the taller wolf saying his brother had ‘been rough’ with Sans. “Anyway, your name’s Sans, right?”  
  
The other bunny stayed silent.  
  
“Well, I’ll just tell you what the big wolf said. He wants to make sure you’re okay, maybe feed you, and then take you to your brother.”  
  
“Papyrus is alive?” That got the bunny’s attention.  
  
“Well, presumably. I think if the wolf was gonna lie to us he coulda started by downplaying the danger I was in earlier.”  
  
“What happened to you?”  
  
“Oh, it wasn’t bad. It’s gonna sound bad if I tell you, though.”  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
“They kinda ate me.”  
  
“But you’re alive.”  
  
“So are you.”  
  
Sans looked down at his hands, as if he couldn’t believe they were intact. “This is impossible. I remember—I remember him biting them off.” He flexed one arm experimentally, as if it was also mystifying.  
  
“Look, don’t ask me what happened. I just got swallowed and kinda, let back out. If they did something different to you, you’ll have to ask the wolf about it. Come on, he seems nice.”  
  
“I never wanna see a wolf again.”  
  
“Well, I think you gotta if you wanna see your brother. Unless you can just run for it and escape. Are you from around here?”  
  
“No, the wolf—the smaller one—he brought us here.” Sans’s skull drooped.  
  
“But the big wolf knows where your brother is, at least! Maybe you should hear him out. I bet he won’t touch you if you don’t want.”  
  
Sans’s eyelights darted around as if seeking an escape, but found nothing. “All right. Fine.”  
  
“I’ll go out first and tell him not to touch you.” Lust offered and backed out the way he’d come in.  
  
***  
  
Edge had heard the whole conversation, so he wasn’t surprised when Lust wiggled out from under the couch. “He’s coming out! But you can’t touch him unless he says it’s okay.”  
  
“Very well.” Edge knelt a few steps away, to intimidate the bunnies less.  
  
Sans came out and spotted him, clearly struggling to suppress the instinct to bolt, staying partly hidden behind Lust.  
  
“Hello, Sans.”  
  
The bunny didn’t answer.  
  
“I know there’s nothing I can say to smooth over what you’ve been through. I just want to take you back to your brother, and it might be a good idea if you could manage to eat something before we go, if you’ve been weakened by your ordeal.”  
  
The silence stretched out between them until Sans finally answered, “I just wanna see Papyrus.”  
  
“I wanna meet him, too.” Lust chimed in. “But maybe we can take a carrot for the road or something.”  
  
“Boss? What’re ya doin’?”  
  
Only Edge’s ear turned toward the kitchen doorway. “Don’t come in here, Red. Sans is quite understandably scared of you.”  
  
“What kind of a name is ‘Sans’?” Red muttered, but Edge heard him retreat.  
  
“Sans? I’m going to stand up and bring some vegetables from the kitchen,” Edge warned the bunny without moving a phalange. He didn’t want Sans to be startled into darting back under the couch.  
  
“Okay,” Sans agreed, with an air of why-are-you-telling-me-this.  
  
Edge stood slowly and walked into the kitchen, where he knew there was at least a carrot in the fridge. It was probably big enough for both rabbits.  
  
Red was sitting at the table. “What’s goin’ on, Boss?”  
  
“I’m going to take Sans back to—where you caught him. You’ve been hunting in a soft dimension, haven’t you? The bunnies around here were too clever?”  
  
“Aw, you know me, never one to work hard if there’s a lazy shortcut I can take.”  
  
“Lust too? The purple one.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’ll take them both. But I will come back.”  
  
“And I’m not allowed to hunt there anymore?”  
  
“We’ll see. I’ll consult with—some monsters I know. About your condition.”  
  
“Sure you can trust them?”  
  
“I trust them.”  
  
Carrot in hand, Edge returned to the bunnies, not approaching too close.  
  
“Sans. I need to carry you in order to take you back to your world. Your brother is waiting there. May I pick you up? Perhaps you’d prefer to climb up my arm.”  
  
“I guess,” Sans agreed, and Edge wasn’t sure which option he’d meant. But when he crouched down and stretched out an arm, the bunny started clambering up his glove.  
  
“It’s dangerous outside, so you mustn’t jump off midway,” Edge warned, making his voice as soft as he could. “I would suggest you sit in the folds of my scarf. You might catch some of Papyrus’s scent, too. He was sleeping there last night.”  
  
Sans climbed faster and was soon buried in the scarf, only his ears visible.  
  
“You can pick me up,” said Lust. “I’m worn out.”  
  
So Edge picked up the second bunny and headed back to the portal and the foxes’ house.  
  
***  
  
Blueberry answered the foxes’ door. “You’re back! How did it go?”  
  
“Well,” Edge answered. “Where’s Papyrus?”  
  
“On the table!”  
  
Blueberry moved out of the way and Edge stepped inside. Sure enough, Papyrus was sitting on the table, leaning against the nest box, staring despondently at the wooden surface. Slim was napping beside him for company.   
  
Edge set Lust on the table along with what was left of the carrot.  
  
“Who’s that?” Asked Blueberry.   
  
“Quiet,” growled Edge, trying to lean over so that Sans could climb down onto the table without actually dumping him out of his hiding place. “Come on, Sans. Your brother is here.”  
  
Sans got his feet tangled in the scarf and fell face-first onto the table, but it didn’t deter him. “Papyrus?” His voice lit up.   
  
“Sans?” Papyrus’s voice was small and rusty with disuse.   
  
“Yeah,” Sans smiled, wiping something from his eye socket. “You’re all in one piece?”  
  
“Mostly.” Papyrus held up his bandaged fingers.   
  
“How’d you get away from the wolves?”  
  
“Edge brought me here. He said you were dead. I saw you die!” Papyrus’s tone started out matter-of-fact but grew increasingly panicked.  
  
“Shh, bro, it’s okay. I’m here.” Sans took a step forward, then looked back at Edge. “Though I’m not sure myself what happened.” He turned to his brother again. “Where’d you get that shirt?”  
  
The topic was a perfect distraction. “Oh, it’s terrible, isn’t it? But I’m thankful to Slim for lending it to me,” Papyrus answered much more calmly, nodding toward the bunny next to him, now awake and listening.   
  
“It’s great.” Sans sat down on the other side of him from Slim and wrapped his arms around his brother.   
  
Lust nibbled at the carrot. “I don’t understand anything that’s happened here,” he said to Edge. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”  
  
***  
  
After the brothers had rested a while, panicked when Sans noticed Blueberry, been soothed, and repeated the process with Stretch, Edge was obliged to tell the story from the beginning, skimming over the most traumatic parts, with some assistance from Papyrus now that he was talking, in order to convince Sans that the assembled predators were not a threat. The last part was the hardest, because although Lust and Sans had been there, they had been understandably distracted and nobody had bothered explaining to them why they had been eaten anyway.   
  
“Wait, so you’re saying your brother needs bunny magic, but he coulda gotten it without hurting the bunny all this time, if it had occurred to either of you to try?” Sans asked at the end, gritting his teeth.   
  
Edge looked at Stretch for confirmation. “Is that a thing? That people do?”  
  
“Well, yeah,” the fox answered. “Razz has even done that for me on occasion.”  
  
Edge growled, frustrated that he hadn’t known sooner.   
  
“Well you didn’t ask!” Stretch held his hands up defensively.   
  
“But now you know! Your brother just needs a bunny friend.” Blueberry insisted on a positive spin. “Or a volunteer.”  
  
Edge’s ears stayed flat.   
  
“Who’s gonna volunteer to help a wolf that has such a history of cruelty toward rabbits?” Razz put the wolf’s doubts into words.   
  
“I will,” Lust said lightly. “Just let me go tell my brother I’m not dead.”  
  
***  
  
“Gonna go visit your fox friends?”  
  
“Yes. And I’m taking your rabbits. They need to spend time with other rabbits.”  
  
“They’re not my rabbits—they’re just rabbits that live with me now,” Red grumbled.  
  
Edge had been concerned when Lust and his brother, Pink, had decided to stay in order to be on hand whenever Red needed them, but Red had treated them well so far. Edge hadn’t had a serious talk with him about bunny personhood. Of course, serious talks were nothing Edge couldn’t handle! But the right timing just hadn’t come up. Besides, it wasn’t urgent if Red wasn’t actually hurting the bunnies.  
  
Edge spent a lot of time at the foxes’ house, because that was where Papyrus was staying, along with his brother. Papyrus talked of moving their burrow closer in order to live on their own, like they had before, and still be nearby. But for now they were both content to stay with the foxes. If Edge was honest, he also enjoyed the company of the foxes and their bunnies, and felt particularly indebted to Stretch for his assistance when the wolf had suddenly appeared in his lab.  
  
“See you later, Red!” Pink called as the bunnies settled on Edge’s shoulders.  
  
“You guys gonna come back tonight?”  
  
“We’ll see!” Lust grinned. One or both bunnies sometimes stayed the night, to meet their need for rabbit-on-rabbit socialization, they said. Edge had to go pick them up the next day, as he forbade the foxes, or the bunnies alone, risking the trip to the wolves’ world.  
  
Edge made his way to the machine, through the portal, and to the foxes’ door. It swung open before he could knock; he was punctual and Blueberry was always excited for visitors.  
  
“Hi, guys!” The fox was practically vibrating.  
  
The bunnies hopped down from Edge’s shoulders without any assistance and soon all six rabbits had congregated on the table.  
  
“They’re doing really well.” Stretch, sitting on the couch, looked up and answered Edge’s unasked question. “We took Papyrus’s bandages off. He’s good as new, aside from a couple distal phalanges.”  
  
Edge grunted in acknowledgment. Ironically, Sans had been restored more completely than his brother in the end. He tended to keep his distance from both Edge and the foxes, but that was only healthy. Papyrus still flinched away from Blueberry if he got too close, but was otherwise friendly to everyone.  
  
Blueberry had snuck off to the kitchen to cook without Edge’s help—the wolf was a little too large for both the space and the equipment. Although he felt he made up for it with his impressive dexterity, he couldn’t deny he’d knocked things off the table with his tail several times.  
  
Stretch made space on the couch for Edge to sit, and they watched in companionable silence while the bunnies caught up with each other.   
  
“How’s your brother?” Stretch asked after a while.  
  
“Well. And he’s handling the—recent changes—surprisingly well, too.”  
  
“Yeah, I don’t see any bite marks on those two bunnies.”  
  
Edge snorted, not amused.  
  
Stretch opened his mouth to say something, but stopped as Papyrus hopped from the table to Edge’s lap. “Edge! How are you doing?”  
  
“I am fine.” Edge cupped a hand around the bunny, and Papyrus leaned into it. “How is your brother?”  
  
“He’s—adjusting! Sometimes it is scary to be around foxes. No offense, Stretch!”  
  
Stretch nodded.  
  
“But I think it’s something we can get used to.”  
  
“I don’t know about the foxes, but I am indeed intimidating,” Edge said apologetically. Well, Blueberry might be a little intimidating, mostly because you never knew if he was going to show common sense or not. To be completely honest, Red was the one the rabbits had the most reason to fear, but Edge refused to entertain the idea that his brother could be more intimidating than him.  
  
“You’re not intimidating!” Blueberry had emerged from the kitchen with a salad for the rabbits, which he set on the table. “At least not once someone gets to know you.”  
  
Edge fixed him with a stern expression. He hadn’t come here to be insulted like this.  
  
“Yes he is,” Papyrus argued, patting the wolf’s finger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit my [tumblr](http://nom-the-skel.tumblr.com) :3


	4. Epilogue: Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are different now for all the skeletons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First part: soft safe willing vore  
> Second part: willing hard vore (very hard!) and digestion--but not fatal

~~Red and Lust~~  
  
Red sat and watched awkwardly as the bunny undressed for him. It was strange that Lust was so cooperative, but he had to admit it was a pain to get their little bunny clothes off.  
  
“Okay, I’m ready,” Lust announced. “This time let’s go slow. A lot slower.” The bunny was sitting on Red’s bed; he’d suggested they do this in the privacy of the wolf’s room, although they’d agreed Red would go find Edge as soon as the bunny was inside his stomach and stay with him until the bunny was safely released. Nobody really completely trusted him with bunnies yet—himself included.  
  
“Slower?”  
  
“Yeah, don’t just gulp me down right away. Not that that part won’t be nice, but there’s so much more we could be doing.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“For starters, why don’t you lick me?”  
  
“Lick you?” Red, kneeling beside the mattress, didn’t move.  
  
Lust sighed. “Reach out your hands.”  
  
Red obediently stretched out his hands.  
  
“Palms up!” Lust didn’t entirely succeed in hiding his impatience. “You’re gonna hold me.”  
  
“Oh.” Red hadn’t been thinking. He turned his hands over, and the bunny climbed in and then lay down on his back. Red stared at him.  
  
“C’mon, big guy, lift me up.”  
  
“Oh. Right.” Red lifted the bunny close to his own skull and stuck out his tongue.  
  
Lust laughed. “You look cute like that. But you gotta actually put your tongue on me.”  
  
It wasn’t as if Red hadn’t licked a bunny he was about to eat before. But being ordered around by said bunny was throwing him off. He pressed his tongue somewhat clumsily against Lust. The bunny tasted of anticipation and—other bunnies. Huh. Lust had been busy since the last time Red ate him. He thought he recognized traces of Sans in the mix.  
  
“It’s a start,” Lust said with a bit of a moan.  
  
Red licked him again, from the pelvis to the tips of his ears, and made him moan in earnest. “Better?”  
  
“Much better. Keep going.”  
  
Red gave him another lick and then slipped his teeth past the bunny’s skull, resting his jaws around Lust’s ribs without applying any pressure. It would be so easy to bite down, but it would probably kill him without providing any benefit to Red.  
  
“Ah!” Lust gasped. “Don’t bite me, please.”  
  
Red pulled back. “I didn’t. I think you’d know if I bit you.” Or not, since he’d be dust.  
  
“Don’t make like you’re gonna bite me, then. It’s—hot, but—also terrifying.”  
  
“Okay, sorry.” Red frowned at finding himself apologizing to a rabbit, and hid it from said rabbit by pushing his jaws around him and picking him up.  
  
“Wait, wait!”  
  
Red opened his jaws wide enough that the rabbit dropped back onto the bed. “What? I can’t completely avoid touching you with my teeth.”  
  
“No, that’s okay, just—you’re going so fast.”  
  
“What do you want me to do?”  
  
“Lick me some more, build up to it.”  
  
Red let his ears fold back a little. “We gotta do this every time?”  
  
Lust dropped his gaze, perhaps considering how far he should push the issue. Red wouldn’t mind going back to his old routine, except that he was sure Edge would never forgive him. So in a way, he was lucky to have the bunny’s cooperation, but from another angle, the bunny was lucky Edge’s influence was keeping him in check. Maybe he should just gulp the bunny now, and not get his expectations up for how much effort Red was going to put into this. But on the other hand, if the bunny was too disgusted with him, he couldn’t count on finding another willing volunteer.  
  
“All right, fine.” He licked the bunny again, knocking him over.  
  
“Red! Too rough!”  
  
Red stopped, frustrated.  
  
“Here, think about it like this. Do I taste good?”  
  
“Yeah,” Red admitted.  
  
“So you gotta savor me, don’t just—wolf me down.” Lust broke into a grin at the pun, and Red couldn’t help but smile back.  
  
“All right, fine,” he said, less petulantly this time, and pressed the bunny into the mattress with his tongue, exploring his bones, even sticking the end under his chin and behind his collarbone.  
  
“That’s better—much better,” Lust sighed, pressing back against Red’s tongue. “You can start teasing, like you’re gonna put me in your mouth, but not quite. Careful with the teeth.”  
  
This part was a bit more of a hassle, putting his mouth around some part of Lust and then backing off repeatedly, but the little gasps and moans it elicited from the bunny almost made it worthwhile. Red grew bolder until he found himself with Lust lying on his tongue from the waist down, feet tantalizingly close to his throat, the bunny breathing hard—maybe he was ready now. Red didn’t want to spit him out in order to ask, and besides, if Lust wasn’t ready yet after all he could just say so. Careful to cushion the bunny’s back with his tongue, Red slipped his phalanges under Lust’s skull and pushed, sliding him deeper.  
  
“Yeah, keep going,” the bunny gasped. “Not too fast.”  
  
Red finally swallowed, but only the legs. If the bunny wanted to hang out in his mouth for a little while, fine—and evidently, he did. Red heard Lust giggle and felt little bunny hands exploring his teeth and the magic of his palate; when it started to get annoying, he swallowed again. Lust gasped but didn’t seem to mind, and Red let him sit there, just his skull and shoulders on the wolf’s tongue, but not for too long because it became uncomfortable to keep him there, half-swallowed. At last he gulped the bunny down; this part was familiar, the sensation of the bunny traveling down his throat to his stomach, the slight but continuous influx of magic.  
  
Red hesitated to check on the bunny, in case he was angry at being swallowed too quickly, but when the wolf rolled up his shirt and peeked in, Lust only blinked serenely at him. It was strange to see a bunny content to be in there, to deliberately not think about the way he’d always felt about bunnies in the past, for fear of letting some harmful intent slip through.  
  
He’d better go show Edge he’d successfully eaten the bunny and wasn’t hurting him. It was humiliating to have to report in like this, but he supposed he’d have to build up trust over time.  
  
  
~~Blueberry and Slim~~  
  
“Are you sure? It seems dangerous.” Blueberry wasn’t always good at being the voice of reason, but he was better at it than Slim.  
  
“Yeah, I’m sure. It’ll be fine.” And if by some chance it wasn’t fine—well, it had been Slim’s idea. He should say that just in case, but it might scare Blueberry into calling it off. If anything, he was the one taking advantage of the fox.  
  
“Come on.” Slim willed his ectobody into existence, as much of it as he could manage. Blueberry ran his tongue appreciatively along it and up his skull to the ends of his ears. That was nice but Slim’s anticipation only grew. “Do it,” he urged.  
  
Blueberry gave a little huff of protest at being hurried, but leaned in again and delicately licked up Slim’s arm, holding it between his teeth. Slim’s breath hitched, and the fox bit down, snapping the humerus cleanly. Deep orange magic oozed out onto the towel that Blueberry had been right to insist on laying out to protect the bedclothes. Slim felt faint.  
  
“Don’t go slow. I might not last long.”  
  
Blueberry swallowed the arm. “Okay.”  
  
He picked up Slim’s legs and pelvis in his mouth, braced his hand against the bunny’s shoulder on the undamaged side, sank his teeth in and pulled. Slim cried out as the flesh ripped. Blueberry had to stop and bite through his spine before he could actually pull the bunny apart, his ribs and spine falling back onto the towel as the connection was finally severed. And here he’d thought Blueberry might be too cautious.  
  
Slim couldn’t raise his skull but presumed Blueberry had swallowed his legs—why waste magic? He felt the fox’s tongue on his ribs, teeth lining up a careful distance away from where his soul would be, then crunching down, and he blacked out.  
  
***  
  
“Stars, you bled a lot.”  
  
Blueberry’s tone was relieved. Slim felt something wet dabbing at his skull, but not the fox’s tongue. He managed to light his eyes and saw it was a damp rag.  
  
“You bit me in half,” he purred in his own defense, taking an inventory of which of his major bones he could feel. They all seemed to be present.  
  
“I’m sorry. It was too much, I should’ve—”  
  
“No, it was great. Maybe a little unexpected.” Slim pushed himself into a sitting position. “Are you okay? You must’ve lost a lot of magic.”  
  
“No more than usual.” Blueberry’s grin was a little weary, but reconstructing a bunny always tired him out. Slim supposed it didn’t make much difference if the bunny was in pieces to start with, when it was going to get broken down and absorbed anyway. The orange magic that had been absorbed by the towel rather than the fox couldn’t have helped, though.  
  
“Come down here,” said Slim, and Blueberry obediently knelt and rested his skull on the towel—a clean one, Slim noticed, though now it was colored light blue where he’d been lying on it. Oh well, it wouldn’t stain. He got to his knees and leaned against the fox’s skull, as close as he could come to a hug while maintaining any dignity. He ran admiring fingers over the huge fangs that he now knew for a fact could snap his bones like matchsticks.  
  
“Do you feel okay?” Blueberry asked, somewhat muffled because he barely moved his jaw for fear of unbalancing the bunny.  
  
“Yeah, just hungry.” All the magic he’d received from Blueberry had gone to restoring his body, not his own magic reserves.  
  
The fox stood up. “Me too! Put on some clothes and I’ll make something to eat.”  
  
“Do you think Stretch and Razz heard us?”  
  
“Oh, definitely! Did you not hear yourself scream?”  
  
Slim laughed, cringing a little in anticipation of his brother’s reaction. “I was pretty distracted.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(Just About) Everyone's Getting Some Tail](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17184722) by [idontevenknowugh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idontevenknowugh/pseuds/idontevenknowugh)




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